Only bid for Kabul Bank rejected

 KABUL): The Ministry of Finance (MoF), rejecting the only bid offered by a local consortium to buy the New Kabul Bank, said on Wednesday it would submit new recommendations to the president next week.

Following an international marketing effort, five bidders were approved through the Expression of Interest (EoI) stage. The bid had been received from an Afghan company known as MTZ.

EoIs from four investors — Forbes and Manhattan, Kru Capital Partners, Afghanistan International Bank and the Amania Group — had been approved. However, they withdrew and did not submit bids.

Mohammad Aqa Kohistani, the treasury head at MoF, told journalists that the MTZ bid had been thrown out because the firm’s plan was not consistent with the current banking system.

Da Afghanistan Bank Governor Noorullah Delawari stressed the institution’s fate must be decided soon in line with the new strategy for its sell-off.

About the jail terms and fines imposed on 20 individuals, he said: “It’s a decision of the special tribune and I don’t want to comment on it. The verdict is based on investigations by the Attorney General Office.”

On Tuesday, a special tribunal convicted 20 accused in the loan scandal and handed down prison sentences to former executives and ordered them to return hundreds of millions of dollars they had stolen.

Ex-chairman of Kabul Bank Sher Khan Farnoud and former chief executive officer Khalilullah Ferozi were found guilty of pinching $278 million and $530 million respectively.

Out of the loans extended by the bank, the governor said, a sum of id=”mce_marker”75 million had been recovered. Efforts were underway to realise the rest of loans, he concluded.

After the exposure of the staggering $900m fraud in 2010, the government took over part of the once largest private lender, which was renamed as New Kabul Bank.

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