On Tuesday, the son of late Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was ordered to pay an Italian hotel £300,000 for an unpaid bill, in return for a car that he parked there and left 15 years ago.
Al-Saadi Gaddafi left his Cadillac Escalade ESV 6.2 in the car park of the five-star Hotel Excelsior in the Riviera resort of Rapallo, after a six-week stay in 2007.
Gaddafi had been playing football for Sampdoria, when he was living in a luxury suite at the hotel. After being dropped by Sampdoria, he left Italy for Libya without settling his account. He left his armoured plated SUV, worth £70,000, parked outside the hotel, and ignored numerous letters requesting payment.
Now the car has been parked there for such a long time that it has become something of a tourist attraction, say hotel bosses.
Excelsior Director, Aldo Werdin told MailOnline: “We have been waiting 15 years for Mr. Gaddafi to settle his bill.”
‘Over the last few years, we have tried many times to try and get this matter resolved but with no success. We even contacted the Libyan Embassy in Rome but they were unable to help.” He added that “a few years ago we decided to take the matter to court and we won, and he was also ordered to pay legal costs. He left the car at the front of the hotel, and we don’t even have the keys for it. It’s actually become a bit of an attraction with people stopping to take a look at it.”
The hotel eventually took Gaddafi to court and he was ordered to settle the £300,000 debt, as well as £4,000 in legal costs.
After his father’s death, Al-Saadi was smuggled across the border to Niger. He was eventually extradited to Libya in 2014, where he was given a seven-year jail term before being released last year.