In 2011, Security Council passed Resolution 1970, by which all funds, financial assets, and economic resources owned or managed - directly or indirectly - by the Gaddafi regime were frozen. Since then, the Libyan authorities have been fighting a fierce battle to recover this money.

After more than five years, the question of the money that the Gaddafi regime left after its fall still remains. And as a result of the political and security situations in the country, this issue remains highly ambiguous.
On February 26, 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1970, by which all funds, financial assets, and economic resources owned or managed - directly or indirectly -by the Gaddafi regime were frozen. Since then, the Libyan authorities have been fighting a fierce battle to recover this money.
Did Gaddafi have money abroad?
"There is no such thing as Gaddafi's money, and no country has ever provided information that Gaddafi owned money in his name," said Suleiman al-Shahoumi, founder and head of the Libyan stock market.
Al-Shahoumi adds that "all the funds abroad, estimated at about $65 billion, are officially registered in the name of the Libyan state institutions."

The Libyan Investment Authority is the entity responsible for tracking these funds, and five subsidiary institutions are associated with it, creating a huge investment portfolio.
These institutions are:
- Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company (LAFICO)
- Long Term Investment Portfolio (LTP)
- Oil Investment Company (OilInvest)
- Libyan Local Investment and Development Fund (LLIDF)
- Libya Africa Investment Portfolio (LAP)
The Libyan Audit Bureau(LAB) is the agency responsible for monitoring all executive and governmental bodies in the country. "The nature of the relationship between the LAB and the LIA is to monitor its performance and follow up on its work as one of the state's executive institutions," says Khaled Al-Tayeb, media officer at LAB.
“There is no such thing as Gaddafi's money, and no country has ever provided information that Gaddafi owned money in his name.”
Conflicting Information
In May 2015, the Daily Beast website published a report revealing that a person named Eric Iskander Goaied formed in August 2014 called " Washington African Consulting Group " with the goal of finding a fortune estimated at $250 billion, or more of gold, diamonds, and other Gaddafi's assets.
The report added that Goaied signed a contract with the Libyan government that would allow him to keep 10 percent of the value of what he finds.
Michael Bosco, legal expert from DLA Piper, believes that "due to the outbreak of the civil war in Libya in mid-2014, everything has been stopped."
The Sunday Independent newspaper reported in 2014 that it had seen official documents from the South African government confirming that $179 billion - at the very least - was illegally held in storage facilities in South Africa's Gauteng Province, in addition to To hundreds of tons of gold, and six million carats of diamonds.
While Suleiman Al-Shahoumi says that "the amount of money held abroad is estimated at about $65 billion, 50 percent of it is fixed assets in the form of investments, managed by more than 500 companies spread in several countries, and the rest is liquid money in the form of deposits that are still frozen at the request of LIA".
In a statement to the media, Fawzi Farkash, head of the LIA (Tobruk branch), said that he does not yet know the exact value of the money and properties, because he did not have the opportunity to assess the assets of the LIA.
Who does manage the LIA?
The political division in Libya reflected on the state’s investment institutions, and the LIA was not in isolation from this division. With the existence of two governments, the LNA was split into two entities, one of which is located in Tripoli headed by Abdel Majeed Briech and the other headed by Fawzi Farkash in Tobruk.
The matter was further complicated by the issuance of a decision by the presidential council of the GNA headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, which is based in Tripoli, to form a new governing committee to run the LIA.
The two heads of the LIA, Abdel-Majid Berish and Fawzi Omran Farkash, expressed their rejection of the decision of al-Sarraj to appoint a temporary management committee to manage the Authority.

In January 2017, the second administrative department of the Tripoli Court of Appeal issued a ruling to suspend the decision of the Presidential Council to form a steering committee to supervise the LIA, after the appeal lodged by Abdel Majeed Barish to the presidential decision as it came in violation of the laws and legislation in place.
Attempts are still underway to unify the board of directors of the Libyan Investment Corporation to ensure that it follows up on cases of disputed Libyan funds abroad.
Legal pursuits
In September 2016, the LNA announced that it recovered $127 million, following legal prosecutions involving the American Lehman Brothers and the British Cornhill Capital.
The conflict between the LIA and the Lehman Brothers bank was due to the bankruptcy of the latter as a result of the economic crisis in 2008. The volume of Libyan investments in Lehman Brothers reached 200 million dollars, and the LIA was able to recover 73 million dollars.
In addition, after a battle with Cornhill Capital over investments in the Cornell Natural Resources Fund in Bermuda, the LIA succeeded in recovering $53.8 million out of $100 million.

Moreover, the Libyan Audit Bureau, the institution responsible for financial control and accounting in Libya, has frozen the accounts of 10 Libyan companies that smuggled money in foreign exchange abroad through documentary credits of 37 million euros, and banned dealing with 13 foreign companies through which money was transfer abroad.
These legal pursuits included cases against the Libyan state institutions. The political adviser to the Speaker of the Libyan Parliament, Abdullah Athamneh, said, "More than 30 compensation cases were filed by various companies against Libyan institutions in 2016 only as a result of the suspension of their projects and their significant losses."
In March 2016, Libya's envoy to the United Nations wrote to the United Nations Security Council, requesting that the value of the Libyan Investment Corporation’s money be halted due to mismanagement.
However, the absence of a stable government in Libya has always been the reason for the failure to lift the sanctions, which were stipulated in Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973.
Member of Parliament, Abu Bakr Baira, affirms that "the absence of a rational government able to unite efforts is the reason for the economic difficulties that the country is witnessing."
There were attempts by the state’s legislative institutions to recover the money abroad, after the Transitional National Council, and then the previous General National Congress, and the current House of Representatives issued decisions regarding the formation of technical committees to search for smuggled money, and allocated huge sums to them, some of which amounted to 10% of the value of the money collected.
Baira comments on these measures, saying that "allocating certain percentages to the committees that follow the money abroad is considered legitimate theft."
Broadly, in light of the security chaos and political division in the country, it may seem that the frozen funds are the last resort to tackle the economic crisis, but the failure to solve the political problem would always be an obstacle on the road to sovereign Libya.
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