Bentham for allegedly misappropriating money from the company. Cecil, Bentham, and two other founding investors counter-sued, claiming they had not received over £250 million in due shares and alleging "fraud, deceit, breach of contract and conspiracy". The case was dismissed from American courts and ultimately hidden from public records and dismissed in Bayat's favor in British courts in August 2011. Starting around 2006, Afghan Wireless was one of five companies with towers damaged and destroyed by the Taliban, with the Taliban demanding that telecommunications companies in the country limit service. The attacks were reported stopped by 2009, with The Globe and Mail explaining that "public discontent with service disruptions overwhelmed religious or tribal affiliations." By June 2008, Afghan Wireless reported to have 2 million subscribers across all 34 of Afghanistan's provinces. The company had around 5 million users by 2009. In 2011 Afghan Wireless remained partially owned by the Afghan Ministry of Communications, which maintains a 10-20% stake. Allegations of American intelligence links In a 2011 report by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Rose, it was alleged that Afghan Wireless was linked to an American intelligence project called Operation Foxden, a Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency endeavor to wiretap Afghan Wireless' infrastructure for intelligence gathering on the Taliban regime. Although allegedly authorized to proceed on September 8, 2001, Operation Foxden was rendered moot by the September 11 attacks and invasion of Afghanistan. Rose claimed that in the operation's planning stages, the FBI and NSA helped transfer ownership of Afghan Wireless to a shell company, Netmobile, in Liechtenstein, to circumnavigate the 1999 Executive Order 13129 ban on American citizens doing business with the Taliban. In response to the article, Bayat denied that American intelligence agencies were behind the change in ownership, and that "to the contrary, my application for an exemption from U.S. sanctions was denied by the U.S. government." Bayat also denied that he or his companies had acted unlawfully, installed wiretaps, or acted as "an agent, informant or spy". 2010s Afghan Wireless launched a mobile-money feature in 2012 involving biometrics. In 2017, the Afghanistan Ministry of Finance gave Afghan Wireless a "Best Large Taxpayer" award. Afghan Wireless announced that it had launched the first 4G LTE service in Afghanistan in May 2017, claiming position as the country's largest private employer, with 8,000 employees. That year, the company also partnered with 425 wireless networks spread throughout 125