ref:topbtw-4117.html/ 6 Dicembre 2024
African Energy website revealed Monday that Libya had asked to retrieve from the US State and Treasury departments
more than 60 billion dollars in Libyan assets, adding that Tripoli said the assets were secretly invested in US Treasury
bonds by Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
A delegation headed by the Director General of the Libyan Asset Recovery and Management Office (LARMO) Mohammed Mansli is expected
to meet with US officials this December to claim the assets, the report said, stressing that the existence of these assets
was unknown until very recently, according to a source familiar with the claim who spoke to African Energy.
The website indicated that starting in the 1990s, the money was directed through a complex network to be secretly invested
in US Treasury bonds, in defiance of the strict sanctions imposed by the US and other countries on Libya.
It explained that hundreds of bonds were purchased - some of which had reached maturity and others were still valid - in a process that continued
until just before the overthrow of Gaddafi's regime in 2011, while LARMO's investigations showed that the money was not returned to Libya.
African Energy has pointed out that most of the assets, including the bank accounts into which the money from the expired
bonds and coupon payments were paid, are in financial institutions based in the Midwest of the US, indicating that these deposits
could constitute a large part of the capital requirements of some smaller banks.
It also said that there was some concern in within LARMO that these institutions could resist handing over the money due to
the potential instability this could cause to parts of the American financial system.
The report also indicated that in most cases, it was not yet clear who owned the nominal ownership of the assets, and in one case,
a company registered in the US owned by a now deceased Libyan national from Misrata had three bonds worth $800 million,
and the heirs of the original owner were cooperating with LARMO.
The report also said that there were bonds that had been discovered by analyzing data extracted
from computer floppy disks found in the home of Gaddafi's son-in-law, the head of internal security, Abdullah Al-Senussi,
immediately following the 2011 revolution;
as these disks contained the numbers of the Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures (Cusip) for the bonds,
which determine the type of securities and their maturity date.
It also said that LARMO's investigators, with the help of British expert Jonathan Berman, traced the chain
of business fronts and European banks used to direct Libyan funds to the US.
The website confirmed that those bonds were separate from Libya's frozen sovereign wealth estimated at about $200 billion,
which included real estate, bonds and financial instruments held in banks around the world.
(Redazione )
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