Central Bank of Libya sues Zimbabwe to recover US$100m owed from 2001 credit facility

By Staff Reporter On Jan 30, 2026 30,961

The late Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi and Zimbabwe's current Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube (Pictures by Jesse B. Awalt - U.S. Navy photo via Wikimedia Commons and Ministry of Finance Zimbabwe)

LONDON – Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB) a unit of the Central Bank of Libya is suing Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Finance in the UK to recover US$100m that arose from a US$90m credit facility used by the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) in 2001.

Zimbabwe owes well over US$21Billion in unpaid debt and arrears to the World Bank and other multilateral lenders accumulated from the past 26 years. The country is also failing to honour an agreement signed in 2022 to pay $3.5 billion in compensation to about 4,000 White farmers.

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LFB says Zimbabwe has failed to honor its debt obligations, having paid only $5.5 million between 2013 and 2023, while the outstanding balance with interest has grown to over $100 million.

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The bank also states that Zimbabwe’s finance minister at the time Dr Simba Makoni approved a government guarantee for the debt at the time of the agreement, and that Zimbabwean officials have repeatedly acknowledged the debt in official correspondence since 2005.

According to a Bloomberg report, the case was filed in November 2025 with a British court.