Mawlawi Abdul Samad Sani, born in the early 1960s, is a seasoned member of the Taliban who has held the position of Regional Director of the Afghanistan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) in Kandahar province since October 2022. In the 1990s, he reportedly served as the Governor of the Afghanistan Central Bank and before that, as a deputy minister of finance under the first Taliban regime. In January 2018, the U.S. government labeled him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) for supplying "weapons and ammunition to the Taliban commanders and fighters in Afghanistan." According to the U.S. Treasury Department, as of mid-2015, Samad Sani was "personally involved in appointing special representatives to serve as Taliban fundraisers abroad" and frequently traveled to "the Gulf [countries] to obtain funding and supplies." In early 2014, he reportedly supervised the Taliban's activities in "marble mining operations," which included "collecting funds from an onyx mine in Helmand province, and other smuggling operations in which the Taliban had a vested interest," as per the U.S. Treasury Department. Additionally, Samad Sani reportedly aided Taliban members with their medical expenses by facilitating payment of their bills and "arranged for an Iran-based associate to help a Taliban fundraiser in Iran meet potential donors." According to the U.S. Treasury Department, in late 2012, he "traveled at the request of OFAC designated [then] Taliban Finance Commission Head, Gul Agha [Ishaqzai], to the Girdi Jungal area in Pakistan and collected approximately $450,000 worth of Pakistani rupees from narcotics traffickers."
