KABUL, Afghanistan — Citing fear of reprisals and political interference in his investigation of the largest financial scandal in the country, the governor of Afghanistan’s Central Bank announced his resignation Monday while in the United States, saying that he no longer felt safe in Afghanistan.  The banker, Abdul Qadeer Fitrat, made his resignation public in telephone interviews with Afghan radio stations and in a pointed resignation letter, which was e-mailed to reporters. He has been under near constant criticism and the threat of legal action from the attorney general, who is appointed by President Hamid Karzai, since he began to speak out publicly about the fraud at the Kabul Bank, the nation’s largest private bank.  The bank’s near collapse involved years of malfeasance by politically connected bank shareholders, including the brothers of both Mr. Karzai and the first vice president, Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who along with other shareholders took more than $900 million in loans, many of them interest free with no repayment plans.  The bank’s troubles and the government’s failure to deal with them was one of several issues that caused the International Monetary Fund to suspend its program with Afghanistan, which had the effect of halting the country’s access to some foreign aid money and threatens to reduce sharply the country’s ability to access the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, administered by the World Bank.  The Kabul Bank scandal and the corruption and favoritism it revealed has worsened the already tense relationship between the Afghan government and the United States, which has led the nearly 10-year-old war here to rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda and is now beginning a partial military withdrawal.  Mr. Fitrat’s resignation is the latest chapter in the 18 months since the bank’s troubles began to become public, but it is one that threatens to lay bare the extent of the Afghan government’s efforts to cover up the fraud. If, as Mr. Fitrat’s resignation letter implies, the government has made an effort to block investigations into the bank and to avoid the prosecution of shareholders, it would tarnish the Afghan government as well as its NATO allies, who have said little publicly about the debacle.  In his resignation letter, Mr. Fitrat said that not only had the government failed to support his investigation, but that some shareholders “went on the counteroffensive and used law enforcement agencies against the staff of the central bank.”  “Unfortunately the central bank’s independence on regulatory and supervisory matters has recently been undermined by repeated interference from high level political authorities,” the letter said.  It was not immediately clear when Mr. Fitrat left Afghanistan for the United States and what he intended to do next. Reuters, which was among the first to report his resignation, said it had interviewed Mr. Fitrat at a hotel in Chantilly, Va.  In an interview broadcast on Ariana television, an Afghan station, Mr. Fitrat said that after he appeared before Parliament in April and described the details of the fraud at Kabul Bank and called for prosecution of wrongdoers, he learned that “some known circles were plotting against me, and I’m not going to name anyone, but I decided to resign my post.”  A response came quickly from Mr. Fitrat’s opponents, including Azizullah Ludin, head of the president’s high commission on corruption, who has been looking into the bank’s troubles. He suggested in an interview with The New York Times on Monday evening, that Mr. Fitrat was at fault for failing to detect the bank’s problems and was involved himself in the fraud.  Western officials here view Mr. Ludin with skepticism and say he is politically motivated. He was the chairman of the Independent Election Commission during the 2009 presidential election when a million votes were thrown out because of fraud, the majority of them for Mr. Karzai.  “Six years ago it was a very good bank, but in 2010 it was going downhill, but the leadership of the central bank was still giving it good reports, “ Mr. Ludin said.  Mr. Ludin was even more combative at a news conference last month convened to lay out the results of a supposed investigation ordered by President Karzai, although the gist of the report was to absolve most of the parties of any blame — other than Mr. Fitrat and other minor figures.  “It is clear the whole problem was the Central Bank of Afghanistan,” Mr. Ludin said. “The Central Bank of Afghanistan knew everything that was going on in Kabul Bank.” Mr. Fitrat “is the root of the problem, and he knew everything.”  Soon after, officials in the attorney general’s office said that charges had been brought against Mr. Fitrat. An official in the attorney general’s office on Monday confirmed that. “He was involved in all these things going on in Kabul Bank and we do have a case against him,” said an official in the attorney general’s office, who did not want to be named. He said charges were also brought against one other central bank official.  The departure of Mr. Fitrat will almost certainly further delay the central bank’s effort to find a way to meet the International Monetary Fund’s demands and recoup some of the money from Kabul bank’s borrowers.  Rather than focusing on the fund’s demand that the Kabul Bank’s receiver secure guarantees that the bad loans will be repaid and press ahead on forensic audits of other potentially fragile banks as well as replenish the central bank’s coffers — it paid at least $500 million to keep Kabul Bank afloat when there was a run on deposits last summer — the central bank’s work on the Kabul Bank will wait until a new governor is selected. That could mean months more before there is a working I.M.F. program and therefore the loss of tens of millions of dollars more in aid.  Rod Nordland, Sharifullah Sahak and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
An official cites fear of reprisals amid an inquiry into a scandal involving the nationâs largest private bank and politically connected shareholders.