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Munich firm told to stop supplying Zimbabwe with banknote paper

Germany said Friday it has asked a Munich-based firm to stop supplying Zimbabwe with paper used for banknotes because of concerns it was helping prop up President Robert Mugabe's regime.

Published: 27 June 2008 14:22 CEST

There is “serious concern” that the supplies are “providing additional support to the system in Zimbabwe, which from our point of view is not acceptable,” a spokesman for the Development Ministry said.

Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul “has written to the firm asking it to stop immediately the shipments,” the spokesman told a news conference.

Officials from the firm, Giesecke and Devrient, were unavailable for comment.

Once a vibrant economy, Zimbabwe has suffered a financial collapse in recent years with the Mugabe government responding to runaway inflation by printing more and more banknotes of ever higher denominations. The rate of inflation is officially put at 165,000 percent but economists believe it is many times higher still.

Zimbabweans voted in a presidential runoff election on Friday with Mugabe the only candidate after opposition leader and first round winner Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew because of violence.

The European Commission slammed Friday the election as a “sham” whose result will be “hollow and meaningless.”

MUNICH

Four injured as WWII bomb explodes near Munich train station

Four people were injured, one of them seriously, when a World War II bomb exploded at a building site near Munich's main train station on Wednesday, emergency services said.

Published: 1 December 2021 16:41 CET
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich.
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Privat

Construction workers had been drilling into the ground when the bomb exploded, a spokesman for the fire department said in a statement.

The blast was heard several kilometres away and scattered debris hundreds of metres, according to local media reports.

Images showed a plume of smoke rising directly next to the train tracks.

Bavaria interior minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild that the whole area was being searched.

Deutsche Bahn suspended its services on the affected lines in the afternoon.

Although trains started up again from 3pm, the rail operator said there would still be delays and cancellations to long-distance and local travel in the Munich area until evening. 

According to the fire service, the explosion happened near a bridge that must be passed by all trains travelling to or from the station.

The exact cause of the explosion is unclear, police said. So far, there are no indications of a criminal act.

WWII bombs are common in Germany

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

However, most bombs are defused by experts before they explode.

Last year, seven World War II bombs were found on the future location of Tesla’s first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs were also defused in Cologne and Dortmund last year.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

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