Karzai puts former Afghan central banker back in charge

Noorullah Delawari speaks during an interview with Reuters at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - World Bank meetings in Singapore September 18, 2006.

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has nominated a former central bank governor to take up the post again, his office said on Friday, nearly six months after the incumbent left saying he feared for his life because of his role investigating a banking scandal.

The proposed new central bank head, Noorullah Delawari, has decades of experience as a commercial banker in the United States before returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

He helped re-launch the country's currency, the Afghani, after years of war in which many different regimes and leaders had issued their own competing versions of coins and banknotes.

He served as central banker from 2004 to 2007 and was also a founder, president and CEO of the Afghan Investment Support Agency (AISA).

His appointment is expected to be ratified by parliament on Saturday, along with a new head of the country's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.

"On Saturday they will be introduced to the Afghan parliament to get the confidence vote," said Siamak Herawi, a spokesman for Karzai.

The previous central bank Governor, Adbul Qadir Fitrat, resigned in June saying he feared for his life following his role in investigating a scandal surrounding the near-collapse of the country's biggest private lender, Kabulbank.

Corruption, bad loans and mismanagement cost the politically well-connected Kabulbank hundreds of millions of dollars in what Western officials openly called a classic Ponzi scheme.

The scandal also halted millions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan, when the International Monetary Fund rejected the government's plans to deal with the failed lender and halted its support programme last autumn.

However in October, parliament took the critical step of agreeing to start repaying the Central Bank for its bailout of Kabulbank, and in mid-November the IMF approved a loan programme that marked a fresh start to relations.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Nick Macfie)