Atlas Mara Zambia says it deeply regrets the interruption in the provision of its banking services that occurred on Wednesday as a result of an execution of a High Court judgement in favour of one its creditors, who the bank owes nearly US$1 million.

On Wednesday morning, bailiffs pounced on the commercial bank’s head office to execute a High Court judgement into a debt Finance Bank owed to Dimitrios Monokandilos and Filandria Kouri relating to a debit of US$949,933.87 from the account of the plaintiffs by Finance Bank Zambia Limited on February 26, 1996.

A truckload of several black office chairs were seen piled up exiting the bank’s premises opposite the Southern Sun Hotel.

“African Banking Corporation T/A as Atlas Mara Zambia has experienced a service disruption as a result of interference to the main servers which host the core banking platform that runs the bank. The interference occurred is a result of the execution of a High court Judgement issued in favor of one Dimitrios Monokandilos and Filandria Kouri relating to a debit of US$949,933.87 from the account of the plaintiffs by Finance Bank Zambia Limited (FBZ) on 26th February, 1996,” read a statement issued by Atlas Mara’s head of marketing & corporate communications Eric Thengo Dongo, Wednesday.

“FBZ was acting on its right of set-off against the plaintiff’s account, on the back of a guarantee issued in favour of FBZ. Following a judgement dated 3rd December, 2014, FBZ appealed the High Court Judgement. The appeal was heard and is currently pending judgement in the Supreme Court.”

And Atlas Mara managing director James Koni regretted the development, which he termed as “unfair,” but added that the seized property had since been recovered by the close of business, Wednesday.

“Atlas Mara deeply regrets the disruption to our banking services as we serve a wide and diverse customer base who rely on us to manage their day to day financial needs. We believe this action to disrupt the operations of the bank is unnecessary and regrettable and we wholly apologize for the inconvenience that has been caused to our valued customers. We have since retrieved our property and are working to restore the banking services and expect to be fully operational and open to enable our customers to achieve their objectives. We would like to thank our customers for their usual support and patience during this time,” said Koni in the statement.