By Marc Jones and Chris Mfula

LONDON/LUSAKA (Reuters) -Zambia’s high court has ruled that Standard Chartered does not have to pay $500,000 compensation to a former client it sold a now-defaulted Chinese property bond to at the height of the Asian country’s real-estate crisis.

The court judgement, dated September 8, ruled the bank had not broken any local laws by selling the bond in 2022, although it was ordered to pay the client’s legal costs for falling short of its own internal code of conduct.

Zambia’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sanctioned London-listed Standard Chartered over the issue back in January for breaching two SEC rules.

Firstly, that it had failed to disclose “material information” about the Chinese property firm Sino Ocean which went on to default in 2023,

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