Pamir Airlines has one month to prove no link to forged documents

A report in the Abu Dhabi-based The National said today that Sherkhan Farnood, Kabul Bank's former chairman, and Khalilullah Ferozi, the former chief executive, used money from the bank to take over Pamir Airways and to increase its routes.

But government regulators now claim they uncovered evidence of forged documents and faulty flight recorder equipment as part of an investigation into a crash last May in the mountains near Kabul that killed all 43 people on board.

The National said that while one arm of the government is trying to recover the alleged improper loans made by Kabul Bank, another is reducing the viability of one of the largest debtors from paying the money back. Bad loans at Kabul Bank could reach as high as $900m, according to some estimates.

Daoud Ali Najafi, the acting aviation minister in Afghanistan, said yesterday he had shut down Pamir Airways for a month to give it time to respond to his allegations that the company was flying a plane with forged documents, among other issues. "They have broken our regulations," he said from Kabul.

The purchase documents from Bulgaria for the Russian-made Antonov aircraft were found to be forgeries and the flight recorders were dysfunctional, the newspaper reported   Najafi as saying, adding the airline also had not fulfilled its promise to pay compensation to the families of each victim.

Of the airline's five planes, two are in Afghanistan, with the others in Dubai, the UK and Belgrade.