DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A top official at the company controlling Afghanistan’s second-largest bank defended the family firm’s property investments in Dubai yesterday, saying they don’t pose a risk like those that sparked a run at Afghanistan’s largest bank.

Financial troubles involving Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s biggest private lender, have cast a spotlight on the extensive commercial connections between Afghanistan and Dubai, a top destination for flights leaving the war-ravaged country.

Nervous customers raced to pull money out of Kabul Bank last week following reports of steep losses tied in part to risky Dubai property investments — a panic that further rattled Afghanistan’s already shaky and corruption-laden economy.

The fallout has also drawn attention to Azizi Bank, Afghanistan’s No 2 lender. It is part of a Dubai-based family conglomerate known as the Azizi Group with interests in a number of businesses, including a property development arm planning to build luxury homes on one of Dubai’s manmade palm-shaped islands.

In an interview yesterday, the son of the bank’s founder and a top official told The Associated Press that the company’s Dubai real estate division is “not at all” connected to customer funds deposited at its Azizi Bank.

“They are not linked to each other,” Farhad Azizi said. “The bank has its own shareholders. It’s an entity by itself that is governed by the Central Bank of Afghanistan.”

In addition to the bank, the Azizi Group runs a business to ship liquefied gas and other fuels to Afghanistan and a property division with plans to build high-rise apartments with names like Azizi Diamond and Azizi Crystal on Dubai’s Palm Jebel Ali, a manmade island in the shape of a palm tree.

None of the projects has yet been built. They were halted like hundreds of others when Dubai’s property bubble began to burst in late 2008. Prices plunged by half in a matter of months and have yet to bounce back. Azizi Group still controls several plots of land in the emirate.

Azizi Bank and its related companies have not been accused of wrongdoing. But reforms that prompted management changes at Kabul Bank and brought its lending practices to light could also affect Azizi’s leadership — a possibility raised in a prominent article in the Emirati daily The National on Tuesday.

The former chairman and chief executive officer of Kabul Bank both resigned because, under new reforms, only banking professionals can hold top positions at banks. Kabul Bank has said senior executives at some of the country’s other private banks might have to step aside as well to conform with the reforms.

Such a move could force Azizi founder Mirwais Azizi to step down as head of the bank that bears his name. His son said Afghan courts have not yet issued a final ruling on the proposal, and that the company was trying to keep up business as usual.

“There will be attention of course on what’s happening in Afghanistan. We just have to continue our business the way it is and stay focused,” he said.

Since 2007, an estimated US$3 billion in cash has flowed out of Afghanistan through the country’s two major airports, most of it to Dubai, where much of it was invested into the booming real estate market, according to Afghan police and intelligence officials.

While taking large amounts of money is not illegal under Afghan law, the scope of the transfers has alarmed US and other international officials because they don’t know whether it could be diverted aid funds, drug money or Taliban cash.

Many Afghan businessmen and relatives of the politically well-connected have purchased sumptuous homes in Dubai, including on the Palm Jumeirah, another of the emirate’s palm-shaped islands, whose gated streets are lined with villas each boasting a private beach.

As part of the Afghan bank scandal, the Afghan central bank has ordered the former chairman of the Kabul Bank, Sherkhan Farnood, to hand over US$155 million in real estate holdings in Dubai. That includes 18 Palm Jumeirah villas and two business properties.

Mahmood Karzai, a major shareholder in Kabul Bank and brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has been living in one of the villas but has said he planned to move out this week.

Reports of widespread corruption have enraged members of US Congress, who have threatened to block funds for reconstruction and the war unless the Karzai government takes significant steps to curb the abuses. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranks Afghanistan 179 out of 180 countries on its global ranking of perceived levels of corruption.