The development may hearten the Afghan government’s international backers, like the United States, by showing that the government is trying in good faith to recover money from those accused of bilking Kabul Bank of some $900 million.
A delegation of the government’s Financial Disputes Resolution Commission is visiting Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where many favored borrowers bought real estate with cheap loans from the bank. The delegation is to hire a representative company there to oversee the sale of assets repossessed from borrowers, the central bank said.
In addition, Pamir Airways, an airline that received millions of dollars in loans from Kabul Bank, which foundered in the fall of 2010, would be reorganized and sold off, the central bank said.
The central bank said its governor, Noorullah Delawari, reported on the efforts to recoup the lost money in a visit to the United States last month, where he met with officials from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as Daniel Feldman, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The State Department confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Feldman had taken place, but it offered no details and declined to comment on whether the Afghan government’s attempts to recoup money from politically connected figures in the country were sufficient.
In October, the monetary fund said it was renewing its credit program with Afghanistan, bringing some much-needed relief and stability to the nation’s shaky financial system. It had suspended the program in 2010, in large part because of the fraud at Kabul Bank and a general lack of oversight of the banking system. Under the deal to renew the program, the government must show to the monetary fund’s satisfaction that it is working hard to recover the losses.
Said Ishaq Allawi, an adviser to Mr. Delawari, confirmed that the delegation had visited Dubai, but he gave no details about the assets to be sold there or how much the government expected to recoup. Nor was it clear how much could be realized from selling Pamir’s small fleet of aging airplanes.
Though some of the money lost in the bank’s collapse has been recovered, the government will still probably have to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The bank’s receivers and the Finance Ministry have said that sales of seized assets might recoup nearly half the total.
Kabul Bank offered loans to its shareholders, allowing them to borrow much more than Afghanistan’s banking laws allowed and charging very low rates. It made risky loans on property in Dubai that turned sour when the market there collapsed, and it lent a brother of the Afghan president $6 million for a town house there.
The bank’s chairman at the time, Sherkhan Farnood, used bank money to buy property in his wife’s name and in his own, offered shares in the bank to politically connected figures, and approved large loans to relatives and friends of bank executives with little or no assurance of repayment.
In its investigations into the collapse, the central bank found that Kabul Bank’s management maintained two sets of books — a false set in Kabul and a genuine set in Dubai, at the Shaheen Currency Exchange, which was run by Mr. Farnood. Beyond the central bank’s announcement, it was not clear what progress the Afghan government was making in settling the problems relating to Kabul Bank.
Mr. Farnood and the bank’s former chief executive, Khalilullah Frozi, were detained and placed under investigation by the attorney general’s office, but they have not been tried.
After the government stepped in to guarantee Kabul Bank’s debts, the bank was overhauled; it has been divided into a “good” bank, with the deposits, performing loans and other viable assets of Kabul Bank, and a “bad bank” that holds the hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans.
Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting from Kabul.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/afghanistan-steps-up-efforts-to-recover-kabul-banks-losses.html?partner=rss&emc=rss