Washington, December 3 (RHC)-- The Pentagon has wasted millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on luxurious private villas for government staff in Afghanistan, a congressional watchdog reveals.

John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), wrote a five-page letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last week, saying that the Pentagon Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) threw away as much as $150 million on lavish villas in Afghanistan, the watchdog revealed Thursday.

The Pentagon also kept an "investor villa" that, according to the letter, had "upgraded furniture" and "Western-style hotel accommodations."

SIGAR "is asking good questions about whether these funds were used to achieve their development goals in Afghanistan, and whether expenditures on villas and guards were actually justified."

The inspector general called on the Pentagon to reveal more information on who stayed at the villas and approved the expenditures. The Pentagon has until December 11th to respond. The Department of Defense confirmed it has received "the recent letter from SIGAR and will respond."

Last month, TFBSO was denounced by members of Congress, after SIGAR found that it had spent $43 million for a gas station there that should have cost only $500,000. Congress appropriated more than $820 million for TFBSO between 2010 and 2014.