New blow for Afghan banking as clerk vanishes with £700,000

A YOUNG Afghan woman bank clerk has disappeared from her job in Kabul along with more than a million dollars.

An international arrest warrant has been issued for her and at least nine other suspected accomplices.

The revelations are another embarrassment for the banking sector in the country, which has seen corruption already unravel one major institution amid ongoing security threats from militants and criminals.

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Shokofa Salehi, 22, worked in the money transfer division at the headquarters of Azizi Bank, a major lender in Kabul. She disappeared around two months ago chief executive Inayatullah Fazli said, suspected of transferring 1.1 million dollars (£700,000) out of the bank’s coffers to accounts of relatives. It is thought she used fake documents under the name Samira to reach India after transferring the money.

Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Two suspects in the case have been detained in Dubai, senior Afghan police official General Aminullah Amarkhail said, adding Salehi’s parents were among the suspects, and are believed to have returned to Kabul after going with her to India.

Azizi Bank opened in 2006, and says it has “a 1,500-plus strong team of employees and with a 20 per cent female workforce is playing a quiet but effective role in women’s emancipation and empowerment.” It also calls itself “the bank you can trust.”

As striking as it is, Salehi’s alleged pilfering pales in comparison to some other examples of corruption in Afghanistan’s banking sector.

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In 2010, regulators seized Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s largest lender, amid allegations of corruption. Its subsequent bailout represented more than five per cent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, making it one of the largest banking failures in the world in relative terms.

It came just months before the conviction of two top Kabul Bank executives who were jailed for five years for a multi-million dollar fraud in 2010 that had left the bank on the brink of collapse. Former chairman Sherkhan
Farnood and former chief 
executive officer Khalilullah Ferozi were found guilty of misappropriating £177m and £338m, respectively.

The two were among 21 Kabul Bank and government employees found guilty of wrongdoing – the first convictions from the debacle that erupted in 2010 and saw £550m in fraudulent loans disappear into the pockets of friends and relatives of the powerful men behind the bank.

Banks in Afghanistan have also been targeted by Taliban militants and criminal gangs.