A French court has lifted a freeze order on Muammar Gaddafi’s personal plane, following a bitter battle between a Kuwaiti conglomerate and the Libyan government.
Kuwait’s Al-Kharafi group had the luxuriously-appointed Airbus A340 seized at Perpignan airport amid a near billion-euro claim related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.
A lawyer for the Libyan side said “it is very satisfying to see the judge has recognized the fact this plane, which belongs to the Libyan state, has immunity from being seized.”
According to the report from AFP, Al-Kharafi signed a contract with the Gaddafi regime in 2006 to build a beach resort, which it was to run for 90 years, but Tripoli cancelled the deal unilaterally in 2010. A Cairo court in 2013 ruled Al-Kharafi was owed 935 million euros over the broken contract and the company had the plane seized as part of efforts to recover the money.
(Source: AFP)
(Court image via Shutterstock)
