Is this the biggest cheque EVER? For Zimbabwe $1,072,418,000,000,000 ... or about £2



It is without doubt the largest cheque ever seen. But it’s worth little more than the paper it’s written on.

The astronomical sum of one quadrillion, seventy-two trillion, four hundred and eighteen billion and three million dollars only – note the only – was drawn on the MBCA Bank in Zimbabwe, part of one of the largest banking groups in Africa.

The biggest cheque ever?: The amount is incomprehensible

It was paid by Kasawe Estates, a property company, and was emailed to the Daily Mail by a group of former Rhodesian expatriats who are horrified at Zimbabwe’s incredible rate of inflation – officially 2.2 million per cent, but, British experts say, closer to 12.5 million per cent.

Currency dealers said the plunging value of Zimbabwe dollars made it almost impossible to estimate its value, but some thought it would have been worth no more than a few pounds yesterday -- and certainly even less today.

The incredible cheque, which is believed to be a payment as part of a property deal, was revealed as the Zimbabwe central bank decided to reduce the huge sums that hard-pressed citizens have to deal with by simply knocking 10 zeros off the end.

Desperate measures: The new Zimbabwean one dollar note

That means that from Friday, when new bank notes are printed, 10 billion old Zimbabwean dollars become a single dollar.

The desperate move was taken by bank governor Gideon Gono because the nation’s computers, calculators and ATMs faced meltdown because they can’t handle all the zeros involved when bread and staple foods cost billions and trillions of dollars.

The move came a week after Dr Gono introduced a 100 billion-dollar note which is now not enough to buy a loaf of bread.

But analysts said the move would do nothing to end an economic disaster blamed on President Robert Mugabe's land-grab policies which have caused chronic shortages of food and foreign currency.

The Guinness Book of Records says the greatest amount in real money paid by a single cheque in the history of banking was £2,474,655,000 (two billion four hundred and seventy four million, six hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds). It was issued in March 1995 as part of a share deal between Glaxo and the Wellcome Trust.



"The Zimbabwe dollar will be redenominated by a factor of one to 10, which means we are removing 10 zeros from our monetary value. Ten billion (Zimbabwean) dollars today will be reduced to one dollar with effective from August 1," Gono said in a television broadcast.

Fault: Robert Mugabe in Harare today. Analysts have blamed the hyperinflation on his economic policies

"The new currency will co-circulate together with the family of bearer cheques ... which shall cease to be legal tender on the 31st of December 2008," Gono said.

Prices are rocketing on a daily basis as ordinary Zimbabweans struggle to survive.

Businesses justify price hikes as the only measure to avert collapse.

Gono in mid-2006 removed three zeros from the local dollar to make life easier for shoppers forced to carry huge piles of cash to make even the simplest purchases, but the move was followed by sharp price rises.

The government this month started distributing subsidised basic goods and quietly hiked salaries for its workers to an average 2 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, worth £17 dollars on the official market and as low as £1.50 on the parallel market.

The salary is enough to pay for 10 trips to work at today's fares or buy eight loaves of bread.

Mugabe accuses businesses of unfairly increasing prices as part of a wider plot to incite people against his government and today warned companies that authorities would impose emergency measures if they continued profiteering.

Gono raised the daily cash withdrawal limit from 100 billion Zimbabwean dollars to 2 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, which analysts said was still far short of individual daily cash requirements.

"This (re-denomination) is just to overcome the absurd difficulty of having to deal with all those zeros but it does not address the root cause of the problem," John Robertson, an economic consultant, said.

"The problem is of scarcity of foreign earnings and investment inflows. I would like to see the government remove its 51 per cent empowerment requirement on all new investments."

Mugabe early this year signed into law a bill giving local owners majority control of foreign-owned firms, including mines and banks.

