You're over thinking it. Stock in the these banks are majority held by the Governments and the rest largely by individuals/mutual funds/pension funds. So when these loans become "non-performing", the people left holding the bag are the common tax-payers. This is simply a less easily detectable way of stealing public money and usually there's some under the table incentives to the individual bankers approving this stuff, together with threat of political strong arm if not.

Awarding government contracts to companies owned by relatives and political allies is another way though that's more easily detected.