AN Afghan court has sentenced 20 people, including two senior Kabul Bank executives, for their roles in a staggering $US900 million ($A888 million) fraud that caused the country's largest bank to collapse in 2010.
Judge Shamsul Rahman Shams jailed the executives for five years and ordered them to repay $US808 million of the total, stolen in a sophisticated operation that saw cash used to buy homes in Britain, Dubai, Switzerland and the United States.
The bank's former chairman, Sher Khan Farnoud, and its former CEO Khalilullah Ferozi, were both in court to hear the verdicts.
Eighteen other former Kabul Bank and central bank officials were ordered jailed for between six months and four years.
It was the first time anyone has been sentenced for the scandal, but anti-corruption campaigners immediately criticised the verdicts and said it was unclear how much time those convicted would actually spend behind bars.
The scandal also touched a brother of President Hamid Karzai and a brother of Vice-President Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Both the brothers were shareholders in the bank and there has also been criticism that neither of them were charged.
"In comparison to the depth of the crisis, five years is far too little," former deputy foreign minister Mahmoud Saikal said.
"This cost Afghanistan its credibility, caused enormous losses, and the court verdicts only came after huge international pressure."
Kabul Bank was seized by the government in 2010 after the exposure of the fraud, which led the International Monetary Fund temporarily to halt its hundreds of millions of dollars of loans to Afghanistan.
Renamed New Kabul Bank, it was later bailed out by the government.
The criminal proceedings have been watched closely by Western donors for signs that the country is finally tackling rampant government corruption.
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