GADHAFI's billions may be unaccounted for
Late Libyan leader, Gadhafi (posted by Samod Biobaku) |
Late Libyan leader, Gadhafi's corpse (posted by Samod Biobaku) |
Gadhafi's billions may be unaccounted for
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's war chest might have been
large enough at one point to support fighting against rebel forces, but how
much Libya 's
Transitional National Council can extract after Gadhafi's reported death
remains to be seen.
Gadhafi and his family had an estimated $33 billion and $60
billion in unaccounted money around the world before his death.
The country's oil wealth, as the world's 12th largest oil
exporter, was a source of high-living not necessarily for Gadhafi but for his
children.
Powell said Gadhafi lived in tents, and tried to set up camp
when he traveled abroad as well.
"His children generally went a little bit off the rails
and really enjoyed the high life," Powell said.
Libyan rebels announced in August they had captured three of
Gadhafi's sons, including Seif al Islam Gadhafi, his second-eldest son and his
reported expected successor.
In addition to Seif al Islam, his brothers, Saadi and
Mohammed Gadhafi, have reportedly been arrested.
Mansour El-Kikhia, a professor of political science at the University of Texas ,
San Antonio ,
said Gadhafi and his children helped themselves to the Libyan treasury without
accountability.
He said some of his children had large private yachts,
planes and property in cities such as Geneva , Vienna and London .
Powell said the Libyan government was "hugely
corrupt" and dominated both the political and business networks of the
country.
"They paid themselves out of government coffers and
gave themselves official roles," Powell said of the Gadhafi family.
Daniel Serwer, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies and a scholar at the Middle
East Institute, said Libya 's
new Transitional National Council could have a "very difficult" time
regaining state assets.
"I can guarantee you right now someone is trying to
privatize whatever assets are sitting in Libya 's central bank, privatizing
land, offices, and stealing computers. This is what goes on," Serwer said
during a conference call Monday afternoon, hosted by the Council on Foreign
Relations.
Powell said part of the difficulty in identifying Gadhafi's
bank accounts is that his surname is not easily translated into English.
"Literally there are hundreds of ways to spell 'Gadhafi,'"
he said.
Powell said Gadhafi had vast cash and gold resources in Tripoli he could access
if other countries froze his foreign assets, which eventually happened.
The Obama administration announced in February that it had
frozen $30 billion belonging to the government of Libya ,
the Central Bank of Libya
and the Libyan Investment Authority. Canada ,
Austria , the United Kingdom
and other countries also froze the regime's assets.
The Dutch government froze about $4.5 billion in March and
announced in August it was giving about $144 million of that to the World
Health Organization to distribute medicine to the Libyan people, according to
the British newspaper, the Telegraph.
And based on the country's oil revenues and reports of
investments around the world, El-Kikhia said he estimates an additional $60
billion has yet to be tracked in other countries, including Angola , South
Africa , Uganda ,
and other places in Asia and Latin America .
The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates Libya 's oil
export revenue in 2010 was $45 billion. The country's gross domestic product
that year was $90.57 billion using purchasing power parity, with a population
of 6,597,960 people, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to a reported cable from the U.S. State Department
in January 2010, ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz wrote that Gadhafi's regime
controlled $32 billion in liquid assets around the world. The U.S. State
Department has not commented on any reported "leaked cables" by
Wikileaks.
Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit research firm in Washington , D.C. ,
advocating against illicit global financial flows, said that $33 billion in
Libyan money has been unaccounted for from 2001 to 2009, according to data from
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Monique Danziger, communications director with Global
Financial Integrity, said Libya
has the "spottiest" data reporting of the 162 countries that report
financial figures to the IMF and World Bank.
"These are all puzzle pieces," she said. "No
one can say they have a wholistic estimate. You're working with huge data gaps
no matter what."
In the end, Powell said Gadhafi was an "absolutely
atrocious leader" and arguably "the most eccentric leader in the
world."
"Libya
was stuck with the most incoherent governmental system in the world,"
Powell said.
Culled from
ABC News
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