The Iraqi central bank has placed private lender Warka Bank under guardianship to supervise it through insolvency, Reuters has reported. the bank had been in talks with Standard Chartered to sell a stake last year, but the talks reached a dead end, said Mudher Kasim, deputy governor of the central Bank of Iraq. "We gave Warka a chance to have Standard Chartered to be a partner but that did not happen, so there was nothing we could do as a financial authority ... but to intervene as a guardian," Kasim said.