Seven Charged Over One Borrower Who Owed Ethiopian Banks Nearly 2.4 Billion Birr

A company that owed banks across Ethiopia more than 2.3 billion birr combined allegedly got special treatment from one of them — and now five of that bank's own executives are facing corruption charges over it.

Ethiopia's Federal High Court's Fifth Anti-Corruption Bench has charged seven defendants — five current or former Amhara Bank executives, the borrowing company Zemera Investment Group (ZIG) Plc, and its general manager — with "abuse of office and grand corruption." Prosecutors allege Amhara Bank lost 137 million birr in the process.

What prosecutors say happened

According to the charges, ZIG's credit facility with Amhara Bank was renegotiated four separate times — and at every stage, the normal safeguards were allegedly skipped:

• No credit analysis was conducted on the loans
• The bank's own Loan Committee approval was bypassed
• No tangible collateral was required — the bank's own coverage on the loan sat around

just 50%

• The National Bank of Ethiopia's Credit Bureau — the system banks use to check a

borrower's existing debt elsewhere — was allegedly ignored

• Earlier internal audit findings were disregarded
• Required bonds were skipped, and some transactions weren't properly booked as loans at all

Had the Credit Bureau check happened, it would have shown ZIG already owed 853.2 million birr to Amhara Bank and a further 1.5 billion birr to other banks — north of 2.3 billion birr in total exposure for a single company.

Separately, prosecutors say a required $1.725 million blocked account tied to a letter of credit was never collected, and a second LC deal worth $336,960 is also under scrutiny. Uncollected penalties and interest on the ZIG relationship allegedly add up to a further 112 million birr — against a company that, per the charges, had paid back only about 11% of what it owed.

Who's named

• Chanyalew Demissie — former acting CEO
• Biziyam Sebsibe — corporate banking director
• Bizuayehu Seyoum — chief banking business officer
• Mitiku Tarekegh — relationships manager
• Lealem Getachew — international banking director
• Zemera Investment Group (ZIG) Plc and Zemedkun Zewde, its general manager

Two of the individual defendants — Bizuayehu Seyoum and Lealem Getachew — are in custody. The rest are currently at large. The case was adjourned to October 2026.

The bank behind the headline

Amhara Bank is a relatively young institution — its founding CEO, Henok Kebede, has since moved to Nib Bank, and his successor, Yohannes Ayalew, has since moved to Tseday Bank. A new CEO, Yihnalem Aknaw, has been approved by the National Bank of Ethiopia and arrives from Dashen Bank, with Samuel Tadesse serving as acting president and Gashaw Debebe chairing the board in the meantime.

The bank itself isn't struggling. For the 2024/25 fiscal year it posted 655 million birr in gross profit and 592 million birr net, across 315 branches, 4,762 employees, and roughly 165,000 shareholders. In just the first eight months of the current fiscal year, gross profit has already hit 1.82 billion birr, total assets sit at 52.76 billion birr, deposits at 37.9 billion birr, and outstanding loans have grown 29% to 25.6 billion birr — with non-performing loans at a comparatively low 4.9% and 9.9 billion birr recovered in bad loans this year. The ZIG case is one relationship inside a bank that, by its own numbers, is otherwise growing fast.

Why it matters

This isn't a story about a bank in trouble — it's a story about what happens inside a fast- growing bank when the internal controls meant to catch exactly this kind of concentration risk get quietly skipped, four renegotiations in a row, for one borrower who ultimately owed more than two billion birr system-wide. The charges name the specific safeguards allegedly bypassed — credit analysis, committee approval, collateral, the Credit Bureau check — which reads less like an isolated lapse and more like a checklist of everything a lending process is supposed to catch, missed in sequence. Whatever the court finds, the case is a live example of the gap between a bank's headline growth numbers and what was actually happening inside individual loan files.

Sources:

• Addis Fortune — "Prosecutors Charge Seven Alleging Amhara Bank's Credit Controls Bend for One Borrower" (published 2026-08-15)

Editorial note: single-sourced from Addis Fortune's reporting — this is a court case with named defendants and serious allegations, so seek a second source (court filings, a second outlet, or ideally a comment request to Amhara Bank/the defendants' counsel) rather than running on one article alone. The charges are allegations, not proven facts — language throughout should stay in "prosecutors allege" / "according to the charges" framing, not stated as settled fact, until/unless a verdict changes that.