Libya seeks $100m as Zimbabwe’s debt disputes deepen

Libya’s central bank is suing Zimbabwe’s finance minister and national oil company for more than $100 million, the latest development in a spiraling debt crisis that’s bedeviled the southern African nation for a quarter of a century.

The claim was filed in November in a UK High Court dealing with commercial issues by Libyan Foreign Bank, a unit of the Central Bank of Libya known as LFB, over loans taken out against a 2001 credit facility that Zimbabwe has allegedly failed to honor, court documents show. Justice Richard Jacobs has given the Zimbabwean defendants until the end of this month to file a defense.

The country has been locked out of international capital markets because of at least $21 billion in unpaid debt, with arrears to the World Bank and other multilateral lenders accumulating over the last 26 years. It’s also in dispute with a number of private creditors.

Bloomberg reported in 2022 that Zimbabwe was in talks to repay Trafigura Group for unpaid fuel import bills with $226 million in gold and nickel.

The country has also reneged on a 2022 agreement to pay $3.5 billion in compensation to about 4 000 White farmers who had their land violently seized at the turn of the century in a wave of land invasions that the then president, Robert Mugabe, said was justified by the injustices perpertrated during the colonial era.

The Libyan bank alleges that a Zimbabwean state-owned fuel distribution company, the National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe agreed in 2001 to a credit facility of $90 million with LFB and drew down almost half of that sum over the next two years to pay for fuel imports from Oilinvest BV of the Netherlands.

The firm has repaid only $5.5 million in four installments between 2013 and 2023 and the amount owed, together with interest, now amounts to more than $100 million, LFB said in the documents.

LFB didn’t respond to a request for additional comment. Neither did Zimbabwe’s oil company or the finance ministry.

Simbarashe Makoni, Zimbabwe’s finance minister at the time of signing, agreed that his ministry would act as guarantor to the debt. Mthuli Ncube is Zimbabwe’s current finance minister.

LFB alleges that since 2005, Zimbabwean state officials have repeatedly acknowledged the outstanding debt in correspondence with the lender.

Ncube has accepted that the case can proceed in the UK court after initially planning to contest its jurisdiction, according to Justice Jacob’s order.

© 2026 Bloomberg

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