New leaks released by the US State Department revealed information related to the reasons that prompted former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to intervene in Libya to overthrow the late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
A leaked American document from the mail of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed that French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the intervention in Libya in order to preserve his country’s influence in the region.
The document, which bears the date of April 2, 2011, indicated that “whoever moved France to intervene in Libya in order to overthrow Gaddafi is what the man had of tons of gold, in addition to the large Libyan stockpile of oil.”
The document quoted sources close to Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi’s advisers, that “Muammar Gaddafi was subject to control of 143 tons of gold and a similar amount of silver.”
In late March 2011, these massive stocks of gold and silver were transferred from the Libyan Central Bank vaults in Tripoli to the city of Sabha, in southwestern Libya, towards the Libyan borders with Niger and Chad.
According to leaked Clinton letters, “Gaddafi intended to use these quantities of gold and silver to create an African currency based on the Libyan gold dinar, with this currency being the main one in French-speaking countries.”
The value of this quantity of gold and silver is estimated at more than 7 billion dollars, and French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the start of the popular uprising in Libya against Gaddafi, and it was one of the important factors that prompted Sarkozy to intervene in Libya.