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Security cameras showed the bank's vault had been cleaned
out, but investigators were waiting to gain access before
confirming the total missing, he said.
"Yesterday we could only open one of the treasury's doors. We
hope to open the next one today," the central bank director for
Afghanistan's southwestern region, Fazel Ahmad Azimi, said.
Weak regulation undermines confidence in Afghanistan's fragile
banking system, which has yet to fully recover from a 2010
scandal over a bank that collapsed triggering a financial
crisis.
An international financial watchdog last year threatened to
place Afghanistan on a blacklist and has since warned it needs
to do more to enforce laws to regulate its banking sector.
The Kandahar raid is believed to have been carried out by a
senior official at the bank, an employee of nine years, with the
help of his son and brother-in-law who were also on staff,
according to Azimi.
The robbery at the branch in Spin Boldak near the border with
Pakistan was discovered on Thursday and investigators believed
the group has escaped to Pakistan.
The group had removed CCTV recordings before fleeing to
Pakistan, Azimi said, but investigators were hopeful that
footage might be recovered from the memory chip of the security
cameras.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Writing by Jessica
Donati; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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