Money, Money, Money...........

I Lived in Botswana for 5 years and have visited Zimbabwe a number of times. I remember when £1 got you $80 Zim dollars. How times change.....

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

Last updated at 6:13 PM on 30th July 2008

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. Enlarge

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. Enlarge

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.