Nine Ethiopian bankers have been found guilty of banking misdemeanours involving letter of credit (L/C) transactions.

The former bankers, who worked for Awash International Bank (AIB), committed several offences between October and December 2009.

Charges proven

The court found that the bankers approved more than US$6.1 million of credit outside of the bank's foreign currency procedure.

It was also found that the defendants falsified documents, created an artificial foreign currency shortage and harmed the interest of others.

Case history

One of those found guilty was AIB's former president, Leikun Brehanu.

In this long running case, twelve AIB employees were originally charged with L/C misdemeanours while only ten of them were brought to court earlier this year (DC World News, 29 March 2011 and 1 July 2011).

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or any of the other partners in DC-PRO.