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WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO GADDAFI’S BILLIONS?

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Colonel Gaddafi’s death has raised the question of what will happen to the missing billions he siphoned off and deposited around the world. The fallen dictator is believed to have had around $168 billion in assets abroad, most of which has been frozen since the start of the year. The stash includes a string of plush properties, valuable real estate and shares in multinational companies.
Most of the assets were channeled by the Libyan Central Bank and Libyan Investment Authority, the £60 billion sovereign wealth fund the Gaddafi family is believed to have used as a private bank account. A significant amount is still in the hands of surviving members of the deposed tyrant’s family, and could be used to fund insurgents in the newly liberated Libya.
Sums are likely to be in neighboring countries like Algeria, which are being used as safe havens for Gaddafi’s wife and grown-up children, and grandchildren. It is also thought that members of the Gaddafi family who fled to Algeria were carrying gold bars.
The palatial neo-Georgian townhouse was used by the tyrant’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi before it was taken over by squatters in March.
It has a swimming pool and suede-lined cinema room and was purchased in 2009 – but its future is now uncertain.
Today, officials claimed Saif has been captured close to Tripoli after suffering critical injuries in a bombing raid.
The regime also owned Portman House, a 146,550 sq ft retail complex in Oxford Street, London, which houses retailers such as Boots and New Look, and an office at 14 Cornhill, opposite the Bank of England in the City.
In Spain, Gaddafi’s Libyan Arab Foreign Bank bought a 7,065-hectare (17,450-acre) property on the Costa del Sol in Andalucia in 1995.
Another property owned by Gaddafi in the regime’s name was a plush estate called Thunder Rock in Englewood, New Jersey.
The Government has also held £12 billion deposited in UK banks. The U.S. has frozen £20 billion, Italy £6 billion, Canada £2.4 billion, Austria £1.66 billion and £680 million in Switzerland.
Among Gaddafi’s investments via the Libya Central Bank are a 3 per cent stake in Pearson Plc, publisher of the Financial Times.
Gaddafi also had an impressive portfolio in Italy with shares worth 7.5 per cent of Juventus, 2 per cent of Finmeccanica SpA, Italy’s biggest defense company, and 4 per cent stake of UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank.
Since formally recognising Libya’s National Transitional Council, the U.S. government has begun the process of handing back the war torn country’s assets.

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1 thought on “WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO GADDAFI’S BILLIONS?”

  1. Come on….why wil the dude have al these so called stolen funds in hs country's name? it ridiculous. these assets and money were all in the Libyan governments name and for Libya not mummer gaddafi

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