Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed Thursday in Sirte, transferred out in secret from Libya to invest abroad more than 200 billion dollars, twice the amount advanced so far by Western governments, the U.S. newspaper Los Angeles Times reported Friday, informed AFP on Saturday. According to the daily newspaper which cited senior Libyan representatives on condition of anonymity, members of the U.S. government this spring found that the Libyan regime had about 37 billion dollars in investment accounts in the United States of America.
American officers immediately froze those funds in order to prevent their transfer by officials close to the Libyan leader, added Los Angeles Times. The French, Italian, British and German governments would have found themselves another 30 billion dollars. Investigators previously predicted that Muammar Gaddafi could have hijacked another 30 billion U.S. dollars out of a total of about 100 billion dollars.
Thorough investigations of U.S., European and Libyan authorities have established that Muammar Gaddafi took out of country, in secret, for several years, several tens of billions of dollars for investment in almost every large country in the Middle East and South Asia East, according to the newspaper.
Most of these funds were placed in Libyan government institutions like Central Bank of Libya, Libyan oil company, and in investment companies such as Libya African Investment Portfolio. Muammar Gaddafi and his family members had access to these funds. Muammar Gaddafi, aged 69, was captured Thursday in his home region Sirte and was killed shortly afterwards, still in unclear circumstances.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called Friday an investigation into the circumstances of death of former Libyan leader. “It is unclear how he died. We believe that an investigation is needed”, said spokesman Rupert Colville, in a press statement in Geneva.NATO has decided to cease military operations in Libya on October 31, announced Friday evening the Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.