Bank of Khartoum Bank of Khartoum Bank of Khartoum (BOK), with some 66 or more branches, is the largest bank in Sudan. It is also the commercial bank with the oldest continuous history in the country. The largest single shareholder is Dubai Islamic Bank. In 2011 the government of the United States of America lifted its sanctions on Bank of Khartoum. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control posted notice on its website that it had removed Bank of Khartoum from the blacklist, meaning Bank of Khartoum could seek the return of blocked assets and resume limited dealings with U.S. financial institutions.
Siege of Khartoum support of the Mahdi, and cut the Egyptian traffic on the Nile and the telegraph to Cairo. Communications were not entirely cut, as runners could still get through, but the siege had begun and Khartoum could only rely on its own food stores, which could last five or six months. On 16 March an abortive sortie from Khartoum was launched, which led to the death of 200 Egyptian troops as the combined forces besieging Khartoum grew to over 30,000 men. Through the months of April, May, June, and July, Gordon and the garrison dealt with being cut off as food