KPNQwest creditors refuse to lend more money

The creditors of bankrupt data carrier KPNQwest have refused more funding for the network despite the fact that the money was collected by customers of the data carrier on the promise that it would be used to keep the network running.

Last week KPNQwest's administrators asked its customers to pay all debts owed to the business and to pay for services in advance if they intended to continue using the network while they found an alternative data carrier.

Graham Kinsey, spokesman for the technical engineers at KPNQwest's network operation centre in Belgium, said: "The trustees have lied to customers. They asked the customers for vital money to run the network for another two weeks while negotiations to sell it continued with buyers. The negotiations have continued and we even started working for free to keep the network running, but now it seems that the banks have kept that money for themselves."

The company's creditors collected between $15.4m to $19.3m from trusting customers who believed they were buying time to transfer to another carrier, after the administrators assured them.

However, today the Dutch court ruled in favour of the banks that had changed their minds about giving the cash to KPNQwest at the last minute and said the banks, led by Citibank have the right to secure the company's assets as protection on any further loan.

A spokesman for the banks and trustees said: "The banking consortiums don't have to be forced to lend more money to KPNQwest without first securing its assets.

The bank's spokesman also denied the network is in imminent danger of closing down. He said: "All this talk about five o'clock deadlines is rubbish - the network has managed to keep running all this time and I'm sure it will continue to."

However, Kinsey vehemently disagreed: "The banks are treating this network like a car production line that you can just slow down. They don't appreciate this is a service and they are driving the business down."

The banks are owed around £193m by KPNQwest.