The Bank of Valletta court has ordered the return of more than 90 million euros linked to Muammar Gaddafi. The ruling comes after a decade-long battle over the mentioned amount linked to the heirs of whom the Times of Malta called a “dictator”.
In a legal battle that began a year after Gaddafi’s ouster and death in 2011, a Maltese court agreed on Tuesday that the money should be returned to Libya.
The article explained that Mutassim, Gaddafi’s son, was discovered to be the owner of a Maltese company registered with bank accounts in Bank of Valletta, noting that upon his death in Misrata on October 20, 2011, at the height of the civil uprising against his father’s regime, he was found in possession of various credit cards issued by Bank of Valletta.
The newspaper also confirmed that, according to Libyan law, he was prevented as a military official from taking advantage of any commercial interests. Moreover, he did not provide a full declaration of assets as stipulated by the laws of his country.
The article noted that a case had been filed in Maltese courts, with the Libyan state accusing Bank of Valletta of failing to conduct due diligence checks that were supposed to prevent Gaddafi from opening an account in the first place.
The newspaper reported what the lawyer for Gaddafi’s heirs, Charilos Oikonomopoulos, said that the money was private funds, and not stolen from the Libyan state, noting that last year, the Libyan government asked then Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo to release the money to the state as a sign of goodwill.
The article indicated that the Libyan government has long viewed the funds owned by a Maltese company called Capital Resources Limited, as illegal gains, adding that Maltese lawyer Shaheryer Ghaznavi represented the Libyan state in its attempts to return the funds. It is known that former Labor Secretary of the Treasury Joe Sammut was a Gaddafi’s money man in Malta, noting that he was accused in 2015 of fraud, embezzlement, failure to comply with due diligence and forgery to enable Libyans to set up businesses in Malta and become eligible for residence permits.