Britain will pay ?7 million for an audit of the murky Afghan banking system as fallout from the collapse of the country's biggest retail bank threatens to stall new aid projects
The investigation will include a "forensic audit" of Kabul Bank, which needed a government bail-out last year after it was crippled by an insider loans scandal.
The probe by an international accounting firm is also likely to turn up evidence which will one day be used to prosecute bank executives found to be responsible for the collapse.
International officials believe several of the bank's politically-connected shareholders, who include Hamid Karzai's brother Mahmoud, used deposits as a personal slush fund.
Evidence the bank was riddled with off-the-books loans to shareholders and their friends caused a run on the bank. All the shareholders, who include Hamid Karzai's brother Mahmoud, have denied any wrongdoing.
The audit will investigate nine other Afghan banks, several of whom are thought to be similarly at risk from bad loans and poor investments in Dubai's property boom.
I am sick of rearing this words that we should bail tom, dick, and Henry, while we keep saying we got no money for students, the NSH, the pensionars why should we care for any one any more.
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