JURIST EXCLUSIVE – Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Here, a lawyer in Kabul offers his observations and perspective on recent developments in the country’s central bank operations under the Taliban. For privacy and security reasons we are withholding our correspondent’s name and institutional affiliation. The text has been only lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.

The Afghan central bank has announced in a statement that it has blocked the former Governor’s bank account in which he holds his salaries. According to the statement, he has an amount of 6.5M AFN in that bank account.

Additionally, in the same statement the central bank has stated that a committee composed of five members has been established only to assess whether or not the recruitment that the former Governor has conducted is legal.  The problem with the central bank is that the First Deputy Governor and Second Deputy Governor were accused of corruption by the bank’s Comptroller General. The Governor fired both of them and many others after them, which resulted in a huge fight in and out of the bank.

Afghanistan’s Central Bank Law gives huge authority to the Governor and the governor can actually bring structural reforms, including but not limited to hire and fire employees, remove and establish departments, and make regulatory reforms.

The Governor hired a number of people in different departments. I do not know the exact number but it is not less than a hundred. The Governor did not trust anyone and therefore to the end of the regime did not hire First and Second Deputy to the bank.

Now, the problem is that the bank lacks the First and Second deputies and the Governor hired all these other employees. In all of the papers he wrote something like “to prevent administrative challenges and speed up the bank’s operations this or that employees are hired with a condition that this employment process should be presented to the first meeting of the Executive Board”. The first meeting of the Executive Board never happened.

Now, the Taliban have completed the Executive Board and it seems that those employees will be fired.