KABUL - When President Ashraf Ghani reopened the Kabul Bank file in the first days in office, he set a 10 day deadline for the relevant branches to complete their investigations and submit the results to the Presidential Palace.

When the documents pertaining to the privatization of the New Kabul Bank were due to the Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) submitted the files on time.

Regarding progress in the recollection of the new Kabul Bank's outstanding balance, the recollection office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) have not yet commented. Meanwhile, the Attorney General's office has introduced its case against those accused of involvement in the corruption case to the Appeal Court.

Based on Ghani's presidential decree, which marked the first major anti-corruption initiative of the new government, the MoF was to finish the privatization paperwork, the clearance directorate of Kabul Bank was to make a timeline and the MoFA, MoF along with the Attorney General's office and the Central Bank were to work on retrieving the money embezzled abroad by the perpetrators of the bank scheme. But only the MoF has reported completing its charge on time.

"The president asked us to submit the file for privatization of the Kabul Bank along with a plan for reform," MoF spokesman Abdul Qadir Jilani said on Saturday. "The privatization plan is about privatization and its laws; reform plan is about brining extensive changes to the bank."

The Kabul Bank crisis court has reported that the primary court initially judged 22 individuals, of which one who did not show up to court and four others who were released by the Attorney General's office and fled the country. The 17 others were sentenced to prison and given monetary fines, but they were all released on bail on account of an order by former President Hamid Karzai.

Now, the special court is looking at additional individuals and has asked the Attorney General's office to present them to the court as well. "We made our decision regarding the 22 individuals, and now it is at the appeal stage," said Shamsul-Rahman Shams, the head of the Kabul Bank Crisis Special Court. "Regarding the 17 other accused individuals we have issued our decision that they be arrested."

The Attorney General's office joined the MoF in meeting its deadline to submit documents to the palace. "Afghanistan's Attorney General's office has submitted 31 files to the appeals court, as per the president's decree," said spokesman for the Attorney General's office Baseer Azizi.

President Ghani has asked that the Kabul Bank issue be finalized within a month and a half. (Tolonews)