Tinotenda Hove – Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister and the country’s national oil company have been ordered by the UK High Court to file their defence by the end of January 2026 in a lawsuit seeking more than US$100 million, brought by Libya’s central bank.

The claim was lodged in November by the Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB), a subsidiary of the Central Bank of Libya, in the commercial division of the UK High Court. The dispute centres on loans extended to Zimbabwe under a 2001 credit facility that are alleged to have gone largely unpaid.

High Court judge Justice Richard Jacobs directed the Zimbabwean defendants to submit their defence by the end of this month.

The case comes as Zimbabwe remains effectively locked out of international capital markets due to unresolved external debts estimated at more than US$21 billion.

These include long-standing arrears to the World Bank and other multilateral lenders accumulated over the past 26 years, as well as disputes with several private creditors.

According to LFB, Zimbabwe’s state-owned fuel distributor, the National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe (NOICZ), entered into a US$90 million credit facility with the Libyan bank in 2001. Almost half of the amount was drawn down over the next two years to finance fuel imports from Netherlands-based Oilinvest BV.

LFB claims that only US$5.5 million has been repaid, in four instalments made between 2013 and 2023. With accumulated interest, the outstanding balance is now said to exceed US$100 million.

At the time the agreement was signed, then Finance Minister Simba Makoni reportedly committed the Ministry of Finance to act as guarantor for the debt. LFB further alleges that Zimbabwean authorities have repeatedly acknowledged the outstanding liability in official correspondence dating back to 2005.

Justice Jacobs’ order also notes that current Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has accepted that the matter can proceed in the UK courts, after initially contesting the court’s jurisdiction.