A BBC documentary has revealed that the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ruled with an iron fist for 42 years and treated Libya’s wealth as his own. He died the richest man on the planet with a fortune of $150 billion. 

Two journalists pick up the trail of a mysterious $12.5 billion in cash, flown out of Libya in the dead of night just months before Gaddafi’s demise.

In South Africa, they discover an eyewitness who seems to know all about the money.

His testimony changes everything, but before he can provide them with proof the story takes a sinister twist, the first of many.

One team on its trail – with eyes on a 10 per cent commission – included a “colourful arms dealer” called Johan Erasmus and a Tunisian businessman named Erik Goaied whose relationship to all this remained opaque until late in the film.

Goaied wore the haunted expression of a man who was in very, very deep.

But they were in a race against Taha Buishi, an “asset recovery agent” appointed by the new Libyan regime. It wasn’t long before Buishi vanished, only to re-emerge months later with an account of being kidnapped.

Another player was shot dead by Serbian hit men. It was that kind of story – the kind you’ve seen played out in fiction but rarely in real life.

The only sympathetic figure was Tito Maleka, veteran ANC head of security, who seemed to have some principles. He was the only one.