From Transparency International.
Renewed factional fighting in Libya has claimed more than 150 lives in the past two weeks. The oil rich country is on the verge of becoming a failed state with a powerless central government. This is the haunting legacy of Muammar Gaddafi’s corrupt regime that has left the country in a state of constant violence with weak institutions.
What led to this point? Here are the top 5 corruption scandals ensnaring Libyan officials and high flying multinational executives stealing from the Libyan public purse since before the Arab Spring:
1. Former employees of Swiss broker Tradition are being probed in the US and the UK as to whether they used improper means to curry favour with the Gaddafi regime. They reportedly hired senior Libyan officials including Saher Koussa, son of Gaddafi’s notorious head of intelligence Moussa Koussa, and it is alleged that they paid for high end trips for Libyan officials to destinations such as Marrakesh, Dubai and London.
The probe is “part of what authorities believe was a broad pattern in which Western companies used improper means to curry favour with officials in the Gaddhafi regime”.
2. Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), filed a US $1.5billion lawsuit in March this year in London against Société Générale alleging that the French bank paid at least US$ 58 million in advisory fees to a friend of Gaddafi’s son Saif through a Panamanian company. This was to obtain investments in the amount of US$ 1.8 billion in complex derivative deals. Societe Generale and the alleged recipient have denied these claims.
