From: as on
Zimbabwe Sheriff's Office Attaches Five Central Bank Properties to
Cover Debt

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Lawyer Davison Kanokanga said that in the event movable assets already
seized by the Sheriff's Office did not cover the unpaid bills for
tractors
ordered by the central bank, the attached buildings would go under the
hammer

Gibbs Dube | Washington 26 January 2010

Zimbabwe's Sheriff's Office has attached five buildings belonging to
the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and may auction them to settle a US$2.1
million
debt owed to an agricultural machinery concern, a legal source said
Tuesday.

Lawyer Davison Kanokanga, representing Farmtec Supplies and Implements,
said
the properties were attached by court order on Friday and Saturday.

Kanokanga told VOA Studio 7 reporter Gibbs Dube that in the event
movable
assets already seized by the sheriff did not cover the unpaid bills for
tractors ordered by the central bank, the buildings would go under the
hammer.

Bulawayo-based attorney Job Sibanda, a specialist in civil actions,
said the
attachments of Reserve Bank properties had further dented the central
bank's
reputation and creditworthiness.

The deeply indebted central bank, which some sources say is insolvent
and
close to collapse as its liabilities exceed its assets, ordered 150
tractors
under the country's Farm Mechanization and Agricultural Support
Enhancement
Facility before the current unity government was formed in 2009.

Farmtec supplied 60 tractors worth US$2.1 million and the remaining 90
were
to be delivered once the bank had paid for the first consignment.

The farm mechanization scheme was one of the largest so-called quasi-
fiscal
activities conducted by the RBZ on behalf of the government and funded
by
printing vast amounts of Zimbabwean dollars, leading to the debasement
of
the currency and the second worst episode of hyperinflation in history.