More than a billion dollars in cash, gold and diamonds believed looted by late Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi during his 40-year reign may have been found socked away in South Africa — just a fraction of the wealth the dead dictator is suspected of stealing.
Libyan investigators, who believe Qaddafi may have taken as much as $100 billion of his North African nation’s wealth, have zeroed in on $1 billion or more being held by four banks and two security companies in South Africa, according to The Sunday Times of South Africa.
Libyan authorities, who are working with the Arab League and Interpol, believe stolen assets are squirreled away all over the world. The stolen loot is the sum of years of treating one of the world’s richest countries as his own piggy bank, according to Prof. Shaul Gabbay, a Middle East expert and senior scholar at the University of Denver.
“There was,of course, no transparency and he and his family’s dealings with the nation’s wealth was as if it was their own,” said Gabbay. “This includes total control of the management of state and personal bank accounts.
“People who worked in auditing or government ministries would be afraid for their and their family’s lives if they would raise any concern,” he added.
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