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Nyore Madzianike–Senior Court Reporter 

A SWISS company trading in raw material for production of fibre cement is suing African Century Bank over US$998 960 deposited in its collection account by a customer in 2017 which was neither sent to Switzerland nor registered with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe as a legacy debt and is now virtually worthless.

Ramatex SA is demanding the money.

African Century Bank wants to settle the account in local currency, which Ramatex SA claims would be equivalent to just US$3 000 and growing less all the time. The company says the bank should either have paid the money into its Swiss account at the time or registered the amount by the deadline as a legacy debt so that it could be sent as full value later.

Ramatex SA says in its summons that to facilitate the collection of debts owed by Zimbabwe customers, it opened a collection account with African Century Bank denominated in US dollars where customers would deposit money.

In 2017, Ramatex supplied its products to Turnall Holdings Limited on credit and was owed US$998 960. In 2018, Amatex SA obtained a High Court judgment against Turnall and the Zimbabwean company paid the US$998 960 to Amatex’s lawyers.

Rmatex SA then instructed its lawyers to deposit the money into its collection account with African Century Bank for onward transmission to its Swiss US dollar bank account.

African Century Bank said this could be done but there were foreign currency challenges and then in early 2019 the Reserve Bank changed the regulations. This meant the money became blocked funds and needed to be registered with the Reserve Bank as a legacy debt for eventual transmission. African Century Bank was told to do this before the deadline of April 30 2019 and Ramatex was told this had been done through NMB Bank. But on checking in November 2020, Amatex was told the application was filed late and consequently the almost US$1 million was not registered as blocked funds.