The Agricultural Bank of Mongolia had been bankrupt twice when government officials sought help from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"It wasn't being run as a bank; it was being run for other reasons," Jonathan Addleton, the U.S. ambassador to Mongolia, explained during a March 2 reception at the GlobalAtlanta offices and studio in Decatur.

The Mongolian government wanted to keep the bank solvent because the country used it to pay pensions to retired herders and the salaries of teachers and other government workers living in the countryside.

In 2001, USAID brought in a management team that ran the bank for 30 months. The bank was privatized in late 2003 and sold to a Japanese-Mongolian consortium. Now called Khan Bank, it is by some measures Mongolia's largest bank.

U.S. taxpayers invested about $2 million in technical assistance to save and revitalize the bank, said Dr. Addleton.

"The bank is ...