Zimbabwe's banker: Gideon Gono - Telegraph On his watch at the Reserve Bank, Zimbabwe suffered inflation in the billions of per cent - and its currency was simply killed off. When Mr Gono found it impossible to churn out ever higher denominations of banknotes - a can of Diet Coke cost 56 million Zimbabwe dollars in 2008 - he was forced to allow the US dollar as legal tender from April 2009. Instantly, the Zimbabwe dollar passed into history, making Mr Gono a member of the Weimar club of central bankers, namely those who have overseen the destruction of their national currencies. This was a humiliating nadir for a man who rose from teaboy to become a key figure in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Born in 1959, Mr Gono's first job was messenger and tea-maker at a brewery. Ferociously ambitious and hard-working, he took three A-levels and a diploma in bookkeeping in his spare time, winning promotion to accounts clerk. In 1987, he ventured into banking, eventually becoming chief executive of the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe (CBZ) in 1995. Five months later, he met Mr Mugabe for the first time, writing that the president "immediately took a liking to my story of self-improvement." Mr Mugabe took enough of a shine to Mr Gono to make the latter his personal banker. In 2003, Mr Mugabe chose Mr Gono to be governor of the Reserve Bank. Articulate and plausible, he appeared a breath of fresh air. Mr Gono met Western ambassadors and admitted that mistakes had been made. Zimbabwe had to restore relations with the West in order to rebuild its economy. While he talked a good game, Mr Gono's priority was to keep Mr Mugabe happy. That meant printing money at a furious pace in order to fund a bankrupt government. The result was hyperinflation and accelerating economic collapse. Mr Gono blamed this on "Western sanctions." But the benefit of being on the front line of economic catastrophe was that he became immensely powerful. To keep the regime afloat, Mr Gono was the key deal-maker, engaged in a permanent scramble for fuel supplies and other essentials. Mr Mugabe kept his banker in the job, even after the opposition joined the government in 2009. He remained firmly loyal to a man labelled by one Western envoy as "Gideon Gono, the destroyer of Zimbabwe's economy."