Suspended National Bank of Kenya Managing Director Munir Sheikh Ahmed has left NBK after being sent on compulsory leave. “I’ve exited. It was a sack. Suspension was a nice way of putting it,” he said.
Mr Ahmed revealed in an exclusive interview with the Daily Nation newspaper on Friday that he left the bank on April 13, a fortnight after he was suspended alongside five other senior executives pending an internal audit.
The bank, which made an after-tax profit of Sh871 million in 2014, blamed the record loss on a mounting volume of bad loans, for which it pointed the finger at its senior managers.
Mr Ahmed, however, said he is not to blame for the bank’s non-performing loan portfolio. All the loans, he explained, were approved by NBK board’s credit committee, which was responsible for the review of the quality and performance of the credit portfolio.
“All the loans were approved by the board credit committee as well as entire board. The ultimate responsibility lies with them. I didn’t make any decisions,” Mr Ahmed said yesterday in an interview.
