HARARE: A local housing consortium that lost over $1 million following the closure of a bank owned by Cabinet minister Obert Mpofu, has threatened to sue the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), NewsDay has learnt.
Mpofu’s Allied Bank was shut down in January after RBZ indicated the institution was no longer in a sound condition. The bank is now under liquidation.
The Zimbabwe Amalgamated Housing Association (Zaha), which had over $1,4 million in the closed bank, recently wrote to Allied Bank’s agent Cecil Madondo demanding he pay back its money “as a matter of urgency”.
In the October 29 letter signed by the consortium’s operations director, Phillip Chapfunga, Zaha said Madondo had promised a second depositors’ meeting, which has not materialised.
“Zaha is kindly requesting your office for an urgent pay-out of the money that was in its accounts at Allied Bank when it closed. We were waiting for a second depositors’ meeting, but to date nothing has materialised. Zaha is now under severe pressure from its creditors and is about to lose its property. The Zimbabwe Amalgamated Housing Association has no doubt that you will treat this matter with the urgency that it deserves,” Zaha wrote.
The second depositors’ meeting had been proposed to be held two months after the first one, which was held on June 24 at the Master of High Court. Sources told NewsDay that there were rumours in the market that Madondo has or was about to receive $3 million from Allied Bank creditors and from proceeds realised after he disposed of “some assets”.
“Madondo could be receiving the money anytime or has already received it and every creditor wants a piece of it,” an insider said. Zaha director-general, Killer Zivhu told NewsDay in an interview that if Madondo does not act on the letter, his association would be left “with no option, but to sue the central bank”.
“It will be our only option. We need to finish a lot of things on our side and our members want us to take action. We would sue the RBZ, because, just before Allied Bank surrendered its licence, we had a court order that gave us power to attach the bank’s properties in order to recoup our money.
“However, as the deputy sheriff was about to action the order, officials from the RBZ stopped him and promised we would get our money. But then a few weeks later Allied Bank shut its doors. Had it not been for the RBZ we would have recovered some money,” he said.
Madondo was non-committal when contacted for comment. “I am not the liquidator, but the agent. But we only take action on behalf of all creditors and are guided by the Insolvency Act,” he said.
Allied Bank’s liquidator, John Chikura said he had not seen the letter. “I have been out of town and I have not seen the letter. I cannot comment on whether we will be receiving some money or not,” he said yesterday.
RBZ said the closure of Allied Bank was considered to be in the best interests of the banking institution, its depositors and creditors, and the banking sector in general. Allied Bank was formed from the ashes of ZABG, then an amalgamation of three troubled banks — Trust, Royal and Barbican.
When the three banks took out their assets after RBZ reversed the forced merger, the former ZABG was left on the brink despite rebranding to Allied Bank.
