State-Owned German Bank Sending Collectors after Zimbabwe

A state-owed development bank in Germany is sending an international commercial debt collector after the government of Zimbabwe to recover some $150 million in loans made to the country for infrastructure projects. The action comes two weeks after the collection agency made headlines by attempting to seize a shipment of weapons bound for the African nation.

KfW, a German state-controlled development bank that lends to impoverished nations, has commissioned collection agency Commercial Intelligence (CI), based in Singapore, to recover the loans made by the bank to Zimbabwe in the late 1990s, according to German magazine Der Spiegel. The loans were meant to finance major infrastructure projects in the country and have been in arrears since 2000.

CI specializes in cross-border debt collection, specifically dealing with commercial and government debt.

The company grabbed international headlines earlier this month when it attempted to seize a ship full of weapons bound for Zimbabwe. CI was acting on behalf of KfW at the time to compel the government to pay its debts.

But KfW apologized for the action, saying that it did not want to deal in weapons to satisfy the debts. “At no time would we have accepted weapons to secure demands on the state of Zimbabwe,” said a KfW spokesperson last week.

CI will attempt to collect the debt using more traditional methods, according to Der Spiegel.