‘Technical mistake’ behind CAR loan

Russian bank VTB said a ‘technical mistake’ was behind its October financial report listing a $12bn loan to the Central African Republic. BBC News reports that the amount is more than six times CAR's GDP. It said it had no operations in CAR, and ‘a technical mistake with coding countries’ was behind the listing of the loan in the quarterly VTB financial report released by Russia's central bank. It added that no funds were transferred to CAR and the loan did not exist. Nevertheless, Russia has built up security and business ties with CAR in the past few years.