 Governor’s office, Abdel-Latif Al-Tunisi announced his resignation on Thursday.){kind=link}
The Director of the Central Bank of Libya’s (CBL) Governor’s office, Abdel-Latif Al-Tunisi announced his resignation on Thursday.
In press statements, Al-Tunisi denied all reports that his resignation was due to differences with the CBL Governor, Al-Sidiq Al-Kabir. Instead, claiming personal reasons.
In 2020, the Attorney General’s Office issued an arrest warrant for Al-Tunisi over charges of corruption and mishandling of public funds.
This was a part of a wider arrest campaign against corrupt public officials. It came after the Head of the Investigations Department at the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that the CBL and the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) were under investigation.
Notably, a report by the Libyan Audit Bureau has recently revealed the disappearance of $1.5 billion from the CBL in Tripoli. The report added this was approved by Al-Kabir, with the participation of nine merchants; one of them was encoded as “XY” in the report.
The report stated that in the second half of March 2018, the Central Bank repeatedly tried to pass documents for supply goods and services for a collection fee of $1.5 billion.
The report added that prior to Presidential Council Resolution No. 363 of 2018 the supply goods were analyzed using collection documents. The results concluded that there was strong evidence that the documents were deliberately and suspiciously prepared for approval.
Dissemination of false and incorrect data about coverages and transfers that are implemented with the CBL has been monitored. Precedents and repetition of the same method by the CBL every year were also discovered. This caused damage to the economy, wasting of public funds, and allowed for opportunities to smuggle money abroad.