KANDAHAR CITY - Eminent trader and President Hamid Karzai's brother, Mahmood Karzai, on Thursday said he had long returned his loan to Kabul Bank, blaming the lingering loan crisis on poor management and inefficiency of the government.
Kabul Bank, once the country's largest private-sector lender, ran into a grave financial crisis due to unauthorized credit and other anomalies in 2010. As a result, the government partially took over the bank to bring it back to financial health.
Mahmood Karzai, who owed $16 million to the bank, told Pajhwok Afghan News the government had been unable to resolve the issue due to poor management and inability. He asked President Karzai to deal with the matter in line with relevant laws and bring to justice graft-tainted officials.
A few days back, the president ordered the Attorney General to refer the Kabul Bank case to court.
Mahmood Karzai asked traders to invest their capital in the country, where the security situation had improved. "Traders can benefit more from their investment in the country than abroad," he told a press conference in Kandahar City.
About a New York Times report, Karzai said allegations of land grab against him were baseless and claimed the paper had always tried to sabotage basic projects in Afghanistan.
The NYT report says the Karzai family has grabbed land belonging to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) for building a township in Kandahar City.
But the trader said the US newspaper did not bother contacting him or seeking opinion from the provincial governor and mayor on how he obtained the piece of land.
He explained his family had 40 percent shares in the township and 60 percent belonged to other traders. He said nearly 20,000 people were directly and indirectly associated with the project.
Coming hard on the New York Times, Mahmood Karzai said the paper would not publish anything against the warlords and criminals who shared common interest with the US in Afghanistan.
"I will ask the paper why it gives no weight to the right to defense of an individual while earning him international disrepute," he concluded. (Pajhwok)