Afghanistan’s central bank governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat fled to the United States after investigators summoned him for questioning over the collapse of the biggest Afghan commercial bank, a government spokesman said.

“Fitrat left the country after the attorney general’s office sent him a letter asking him to answer questions about his handling of the Kabul Bank scandal,” said Siamak Herawy, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

The government took over Kabul Bank in September as thousands of depositors rushed to withdraw their money after learning that the bank’s owners had lost funds that a U.S. government report said may total $850 million, or 94 percent of its loans. Some lending paid for luxury homes in Dubai for bank shareholders, including Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, the Washington Post cited him as saying.

Fitrat said in an interview that he had resigned and flown to Washington because he received threats from officials he had named as profiting from the insider lending at Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s Ariana Television reported. He left a week ago, the Financial Times cited him as saying in an interview.

Last month, an investigator appointed by Karzai criticized Fitrat and the central bank for failing to closely enough supervise Kabul Bank. Fitrat rejected the report then, saying at a press conference that it was “completely biased and completely imbalanced.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/afghanistan-says-central-bank-chie