A report by the Libyan Audit Bureau revealed the disappearance of $1.5 billion from the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) in Tripoli. The report added the this was made by a decision of the CBL Governor, Al-Siddiq Al-Kabir, with the participation of 9 merchants, one of them was encoded as “XY” in the report.
The report stated that in the inference reports with the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy in the second half of March 2018, the Central Bank of Libya repeated its efforts to pass a decision to supply goods and services under documents for a collection fee of $1.5 billion.
After that, the draft resolution was prepared at the Central Bank of Libya headquarters during the Governor’s meeting with a number of traders in the presence of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy and the Director of the Internal Trade Department at the Ministry of Economy. Both of them admitted that they knew one of the businessmen known as “XY” in the attendees list and did not know the rest of the merchants, whose number is estimated at between 7-9 people.
This meeting led to the preparation of a draft resolution that was submitted to the President of the Presidential Council for its implementation. The reports of reasoning with the members of the committee formed under Resolution No. 363 of 2018 indicated that the proposal was submitted by the Central Bank of Libya. The memorandum prepared by the committee Chairman included a statement to that effect.
The report revealed that the events and conditions prior to the issuance of Presidential Council Resolution No. 363 of 2018 to spend $1.5 billion to supply goods were diagnosed and analyzed using collection documents to determine its background and causes. The results concluded that there was strong evidence to the point of emphasizing that the events were deliberately prepared suspiciously in preparation for its issuance. This resulted in misdemeanors and crimes.
Dissemination of false and incorrect data about coverages and transfers that are implemented with the Central Bank of Libya 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 the state’s public funds, providing opportunities to smuggle them abroad and encouraging monopoly.