Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, has been getting regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the last eight years, according to the New York Times.

The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA's direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Karzai's home, it said in a report on Wednesday from Kabul citing current and former American officials.