APA-Harare (Zimbabwe) A UK court has asked Zimbabwe to comply with a 2015 ruling requiring the payment of US$125 million to two firms for land seized during the country’s contentious land reform in the early 2000s, APA learnt here on Wednesday.
The High Court in London has ordered the Zimbabwean government to honour the eight-year-old ruling by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to pay US$125 million to Border Timbers Ltd and Hangani Development Ltd whose land was forcibly taken away.
The Zimbabwean government rejected the July 2015 ICSID ruling on the grounds that the World Bank’s dispute resolution body has no jurisdiction over it.
London High Court judge Julia Dias, however, dismissed as “irrelevant” the Zimbabwean government’s argument that it is immune to the jurisdiction of English courts.
In the early 2000s, against the backdrop of former president Robert Mugabe’s land reforms, settlers invaded farmland owned by Swiss-German family, the von Pezolds, and their company Border Timbers and in 2005 the government took ownership of a large part of the land.
The Border Timbers and Hangani Development case against the Zimbabwe government was filed at ICSID in July 2010 under the 1996 bilateral investment treaty between Zimbabwe and Switzerland.
JN/APA