The departing chairman and chief executive of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), Mohsen Derregia, has told Euromoney magazine that he was about to appoint lawyers to seek compensation from banks he has accused in the past of causing losses worth billions of dollars, including Société Générale and Goldman Sachs.
He says the LIA had identified four institutions that had sold structured investments to it which fared extremely badly during the global financial crisis, and which were “potentially litigation areas”.
About 95 percent of LIA's estimated assets of $60 billion remain frozen, mainly by the UN, but the true value is difficult to establish.
He referred to severe interference in trying to assemble a board free of conflicts of interest, saying that interested parties “would resist very hard, in unimaginable ways.” When he took it over, the company was "a huge mess", he said, with hundreds of companies and mysterious subsidiaries.
Derregia is challenging his removal from the LIA after just 11 months in the job:
“I want the government to understand that in the new Libya, even if you have the power, you must act within the boundary of law, of rules and regulations ... Otherwise, we shouldn’t have gone out on February 17 and deposed Gaddafi. Because it’s going to be exactly the same.”
In the short term, his replacement will be Ali Mohamed Salem Hibri, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Libya.
(Source: Financial Times)
