New Kabul Bank disputes still remain with bargaining

President Muhammad Ashraf Ghani in the session of economic council has instructed the Central Bank to prepare and new draft for integrating New Kabul Bank with one of the state-owned banks.

However, the Ministry of Finance has expressed ignorance over the decision of President Ghani on New Kabul Bank and rejected it.

“The integrating of New Kabul Bank with one of the government banks has not been discussed. The issue was about preparation of a new delegation beside the special board of selling Kabul Bank,” Ajmal Hamid AbdulRahim Zai, spokesman of finance ministry said.

A number of economic analysts say that President’s decision about the New Kabul Bank turns out to be strange.

“This is a strange news; earlier they wanted to sell the bank but now decided to integrate it,” Sayeed Masoud, university teacher said.

Kabul Bank was badly shaken and almost collapsed in one of “the worst banking scandals in history,”.

In late 2012, the independent investigators and journalists uncovered widespread corruption in Kabul Bank

Following the departure of Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai in 2014, President Ashraf Ghani re-opened efforts to bring former Kabul Bank officials involved in the Kabul Bank Crisis to justice, extend and enforce prison sentences for those previously convicted, and seek to recover hundreds of millions of U.S. and Afghan taxpayers’ dollars in funds stolen or lost by embezzlement, corruption, and fraud by the bank’s insiders.

Ghani vowed to seek to continue the investigation of the Kabul Bank crisis and fight corruption in Afghanistan. In October 2014, the Ghani Administration in Kabul reportedly officially re-opened the investigation.