Gaddafi and his hidden wealth worth billions

by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
August 25, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1702/gaddafi-and-his-hidden-wealth-worth-billions

Libyan authoritarian leader Colonel Muammar Al Gaddafi is now on run with US$ 17 million bounty declared on his head by the 'rebels'. Yes, I have put the word rebels intentionally within quotes, because, no one really is yet sure, who leads this rebel group and who actually insisted in announcing the bounty money. This very announcement of bounty on the head of Gaddafi possibly gives a clear signal that, some 'powerful forces' are willing to see him dead instead of letting him face the International Criminal Court [ICC]. Any guess, why? Most important, with the almost equally powerful 19 tribal groups, who now will become the leader of the Libyan nation? Will the United Nations Security council immediate release the huge assets of Libya that were put on freeze years back?

While hunt for Gaddafi is visibly on, here is an important information leaked by former Governor of Libyan Central Bank, Farhat Bengdara. Inan interview with BBC, he said, Colonel Gaddafi had offered 25 tons of gold to his friend hours back for buying asylum. According to Farhat, there were gold reserves in Libyan Central Bank worth US$ 10 billion. He predicts that, Colonel Gaddafi might be moving towards Algerian border. Here again, a valid question. When we are seeing on television screens that rebels in Libya are basically allowed to continue all forms of lawlessness in the country, while there is no law enforcing agency in the country, how someone can simply flow out the possibility of looting of gold reserve and currency from the Libyan Central Bank by the rebels or some other forces from behind the screen?

In February 2011, it was leaked that, Colonel Gaddafi smuggled US$ 3 billion of his personal cash through a London based private wealth broker. The money was to have been used to buy stocks in London. Interestingly, London-based stockbrokers and investment managers have noted a surge of money emerging from North Africa and the Middle East during the past month. Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper however reported that "Gaddafi owns around 20 billion pounds alone in liquid assets, mostly in London and the UK Treasury is set to freeze them within days.

Well, US$ 3 billion is no big deal for a dictator, who ruled the oil-rich country for 42 plus years. According to many analysts, the total amount of personal and family wealth of Colonel Gaddafi would exceed US$ 75-80 billion. There had also been accusation against Egyptian President Husni Mubarak of possessing personal wealth worth US$ 60 billion. Mubarak was in power for 30 years. For assessing the wealth of Gaddafi, just let us remember that Libya was exporting 1.6 million barrels of oil per day ahead of the rebellion.

The WikiLeaks website revealed that a Libyan secretive fund in US banks holds about US$32 billion. The whistle-blower has also reported that Gaddafi's funds in Europe are estimated to be around US$7 billion. According to a 2010 message from the US embassy in Tripoli, obtained by WikiLeaks, Libya's sovereign wealth fund LIA [an investment vehicle for Gaddafi, his family members and his close aides] holds US$ 32 billion in cash and "several American banks are each managing US$ 300-500 million". In a meeting between Gene Cretz, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and Mohamed Layas, head of the Libyan Investment Authority [LIA], in Tripoli in Jan 2010, the fund boss said most of the billion was "in bank deposits that will give us good long-term returns".

Besides investments in financial institutions, the LIA had accumulated US$70 billion in assets, including substantial stakes in numerous European bluechip firms. The LIA owns 2.6% of Italian lender UniCredit [worth about US$1.3 billion], 2.01 percent of Italy's biggest defense and aerospace firm, Finmeccanica [about US$ 105 million], and 7.5 percent of Juventus soccer club [worth US$ 17.5 million].

And according to latest information Gaddafi has reportedly loaded an aircraft with gold bullion and cash ahead of a flight south to safety in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president has sent crack troops from his presidential guard regiment to fight for Colonel Gaddafi and has offered his exile. Now, it is a million dollar question as to why suddenly the anti-Gaddafi forces, which mostly belong to Jihadist and Islamist quarters, suddenly gained strength and visibly ousted the man who gripped power for 42 plus years. Some analyst claim, the real reason for the intervention in Libya is all about Gaddafi's plan to introduce the Dinar, a single African currency made from gold. There were two conferences on this, in 1986 and 2000, organized by Gaddafi. Everybody was interested; most countries in Africa were keen. Gaddafi called on African and Muslim nations to join together to create this new currency that would rival the dollar and euro. They would sell oil and other resources around the world only for gold dinars.

Anthony Wile, founder and the Chief Editor of the Daily Bell said: "If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks. So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power."

In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in Euros, not dollars. Some say sanctions and an invasion followed because the Americans were desperate to prevent OPEC from transferring oil trading in all its member countries to the Euro.

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