A judge has ruled that a 'vulture fund' named Donegal International, which was seeking reimbursement of $55 million from Zambia, was wrong to charge interest payments and costs, which inflated the figure from the original claim of $15 million. Instead, Mr. Justice Andrew Smith awarded $15.5 million to Donegal International - a company registered in the British Virgin Islands - as repayment on debts purchased by the fund over a decade ago.

A vulture fund, such as Donegal, purchases a country's debts at a low price, and then sues the country's government in order to recoup its money and any interest that they choose to charge. In some cases (such as in Zambia), vulture funds have successfully appealed for a country's assets to be frozen while a case is ongoing.

Campaigners, including from Oxfam and Jubilee Debt Campaign, are now demanding that Donegal do not take even this reduced sum from one of the world's poorest countries, where the average income is less than a dollar a day.

Oxfam and Jubilee, together with the BBC's Newsnight, exposed the activities of Donegal, headed by US citizen Michael Sheehan, at the time of the original court hearing in February. Since then, George Bush, Gordon Brown, and Germany's Development Minister Heidi Marie Wieczorek-Zeul, have all indicated a willingness to curb the activities of vulture funds. Campaigners now expect that the issue will be raised at this summer's G8 in Germany.