Governor al-Seddiq Omar al-Kabir, the head of Libya’s Central Bank, denied reports coming out of the nation’s foreign ministry that the West had returned $20 billion in seized assets to the new Libyan government.
“We never received the $20 billion,” Kabir reported, addressing the claims made by Foreign Minister Ashur bin Khayyal earlier this week that the money, held by the US, France, and other EU member nations, had already been returned.
The $20 billion was supposed to be the first of an estimated $150 billion in overseas cash returned to the Libyan government after it was frozen by UN Security Council sanctions during the NATO summer attack on Libya.
The US has claimed it freed up more than $30 billion of Libyan assets to be made available to the new NATO-backed regime, but it seems that freeing it up and actually giving it to them are two very different things, and the central bank is still waiting on the actual money.
Of course the new Libyan money will never receive all of Gaddafi money. Yesterday I read interresting piece of analisys on the international "humanitarian" help to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake in that poor country. Alltogether 3 bilions of dollars were pladged by donors in US (the United States government, American individuals, families and humanitarian groups). Worldwide it was over 12 billions of dollars pledged by governments and private donors.)
How it looks with distribution of this money? The UN Special Envoy for Haiti reported that of the overall $2.4 billion pledged by the UN for humanitarian efforts in Haiti, 34 percent (or $864 million) of those funds were given back to donor civil and military organizations, 28 percent (or $672 million) was laid out to UN and non-governmental humanitarian projects such as housing and health-care, 26 percent (or $624 million) was given to contractors for things like road-building and infrastructure, and 5 percent ($120 million) was given to various international Red Cross/Red Crescent societies.
NGOs with people in Haiti were given hundreds millions of dollars to improve situation of poor people in Haiti. These poor people still iive in tent camps since the good Samaritans from NGOs need to drive the $61000 Toyota Land Cruisers as their vehicles of choice. Dealership in Port-au-Prince say that after the earthquake it was selling up to 500 of these vehicles a month.
I am sure that "humanitarian intervention" in Libya will have similar price tag as humanitarian help for Haiti. Government who attacked the former government of Libya on behalf of his Benghazi opposition will take their portions from frosen assets of Libyan state. I thing Libya will receive lot of invoices for bombs and rockets used on Gaddafi, for foreign ships and airplanes which were involved in that "kinetic activity" as well as labor hours of pilots, and other military personel involved.
If Libya receives 10% of frozen assets of Libya it will be lucky.
In the case of the Europeans, the money has obviously been confiscated, stolen. However, in the case of the USI, the Libyans will just have to understand that Americans are simple nincompoops when it comes to controlling money, its own money, which everybody knows and understands. In only one instance, the DOD admittedly couldn´t account for over $2.3 trillion over a ten year period, and Libyans are worrying about a few billion dollars? You see, my Libyan friends, it´s not theft in the case of America, but constant and continuous nincompoopery. We really mean well.
I suspect we will have one of our dual citizens elected to some office who will cry that we should keep the money because we got to kill the leader of Libya. After all is not all fair in love and war. It is not right that any one would question the old colonial powers aka NATO.