BBC World Service

Report calls Kabul Bank a ‘ponzi scheme’

Jeff Horwich Nov 29, 2012
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BBC World Service

Report calls Kabul Bank a ‘ponzi scheme’

Jeff Horwich Nov 29, 2012
HTML EMBED:
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Between the U.S. and the U.K., it seems like we’ve got a new financial scandal every few days. But there’s news of a blockbuster one this week that’s about as far from Wall Street as you can get.

Kabul Bank was founded in Afghanistan in 2004 to expand commercial banking in the country after the war. It collapsed in 2010 and was taken over by the government. Now a new report puts fresh details to what went wrong. According to the outside investigation, 92 percent of the bank’s loans were fraudulently given out to just a handful of people. The report’s authors label the bank a “ponzi scheme.”

BBC correspondent Bilal Sarwary breaks down the details of the report and the reaction in Kabul.

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