Ex-Kazakh Alliance CEO to contest Eurasian suspension

ALMATY, July 8 (Reuters) - The former chief executive of Kazakhstan's Alliance bank (ALLBq.L) will challenge in court a decision by the bank regulator to suspend him from his current job as head of local lender Eurasian, he said on Wednesday.

Last week, the Central Asian state's Financial Supervision Agency (FSA) said Zhomart Yertayev, head of Alliance bank between 2002 and 2007, was responsible for misreporting financial statements while at the country's fourth-largest bank.

The watchdog has published a statement on its website which said that under Yertayev Alliance had failed to correctly report some foreign transactions. "As a result, in April-May 2009 the bank recorded losses leading to negative equity," it said. [ID:nL7668054]

In April, London-listed Alliance was suspended from trading after the bank said its securities portfolio may be "seriously impaired". [ID:nL1164182] It also halted debt repayments after its new government-appointed management found that the bank had pledged $1.1 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries in favour of other companies that then failed to repay their debts.

Eurasian bank EUBN.KZ, which Yertayev has run since May 2008, has already appointed a new acting chief executive as a replacement to comply with the regulator's order. But Yertayev has denied any wrongdoing.

"I did not sign any of these (deals)," he told reporters. "In the nearest future we will file a lawsuit challenging the (regulator's) order."

Earlier on Wednesday, Alliance said it had reached an agreement with its creditors on a scheme to restructure its $4 billion debt. Under the deal, it will buy back part of the debt at 22.5 percent of face value. [ID:nL8489725] (Reporting by Olga Orininskaya; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Mike Nesbit)