" Libya is still in the midst of instability and the end of this situation will occur only in medium to long term”. She stated it Giovanna Perri, one of the eight experts of the independent panel of the United Nations called to monitor the North African country. Perri was one of several experts who attended a conference of the Italian Society for International Organization (SIOI) discussing the legal and economic implications of recent developments in Libya. Almost eight months after the death of Rais Muammar Gaddafi and less than a month before the elections scheduled for July 7, the transitional government (National Transitional Council, NTC) in office since last February, does not seem to have a clear strategy on how to manage the transition to democracy.
Giovanna Perri, financial expert for the UN, has the task of finding and seizing the assets of Gaddafi and his entourage scattered around the world. "It is not yet possible to make an estimate of the total amount of this assets," she told FIRSTonline, "You will never find a current account in Gaddafi's name. The Libyan Central Bank was her personal account: the secretary and the finance minister were just puppets ”.
POLITICAL PROBLEM AND THE QUESTION OF WEAPONS – Since the fall of Gaddafi, the transitional government (Cnt) has managed the country which, however, says Perri, "does not find a strong consensus on the ground". To manage the country's capital, the NTC has called upon Libyan professionals residing abroad who, while on the one hand they are considered less prone to the corruption that pervades the local elites, on the other are not legitimized by the population. The large number of tribes in the area does not help to stabilize the country: over 140 different and each with its own chief of reference. Gaddafi had managed, through a system of favors and clientelism, to make these factions coexist peacefully. The NTC, on the contrary, has taken a hostile position towards them by prohibiting the formation of parties founded on religious or ethnic grounds in future elections. But the tribes have a very strong grip on the territory: in Cyrenaica, the region richest in oil and natural gas, a Council was formed, led by Ahmed Zubair al-Senoussi, a relative of the former King who later became a political prisoner under the Gaddafi regime. which calls for a boycott of the NTC and for the autonomy of the region. Added to this is the problem of national security: NATO estimates that civilians are in possession of 50-100 thousand weapons. "Until weapons stop circulating in the area, nothing can be predicted" about the country's future. "The priority right now is to re-educate the population".
ELECTIONS – "The new government will not be elected now: it is a complex situation that will not end in a few months, but only in the medium-long term", said Perri. In fact, on July 7, Libyan citizens will vote for 200 representatives of the Constituent Assembly (NPC), which will have to draw up the new Constitutional Charter. The latter, once approved by the Assembly, will be submitted to a referendum and, if the outcome is positive, general elections will be called within six months.
ECONOMY AND SOVEREIGN FUNDS – Gaddafi and his collaborators controlled the main economic entities of the country (see image), most linked to oil revenues. Foreign investments were mainly made through two banks, the Central Bank of Libya and the Libyan Foreign Bank (the only one able to have assets denominated in dollars) and two sovereign wealth funds, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) and the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company (Laphic). In 2010, Kpmg estimated the LIA's assets at around 53 billion dollars: it was the only audit against the holding company born in 2007 and the estimates are approximate. “It is not known how much these assets amount to,” Perri says. Not even the new chairman of the Management Board, Mohsen Derregia, was able to find the documents capable of tracing the movements of the sovereign wealth fund. It's all very non-transparent”. Last year, the UN imposed on member countries the freezing of all assets directly linked to the Raìs to prevent the continued financing of the violent repression of the population. “Since the first resolution”, explains Perri, “the UN has declared that, in due course, Gaddafi's frozen funds will have to go back to the Libyan population. But who is the Libyan population: the NTC, the newly elected government or the tribal leaders?”
ITALY – In our country, the transparency rules imposed by the EU and the Bank of Italy make it possible to know the extent of Libyan holdings in the Italian economy: from Unicredit to Eni, from Fiat to Finmeccanica, from Mediobanca to Juventus. However, this does not prevent something from being still in the dark (for the interests of Libya in Italy click here). The LIA's assets in Italy (around 1 billion euros) are still frozen, "and there hasn't been any request for a thaw from Libya, because they wouldn't know how to manage them," says Perri. However, Derregia has filed an appeal against the provision that forced the Italian government to seize Libyan funds, accusing it of having unjustly attributed those funds to Gaddafi's family, when instead they belong to the LIA, therefore to the Libyan government and the people of Libya. The minister for globalization and global issues of the MFA, Claudio Spinedi, intervened in this regard, deeming the reasons put forward by the lawyers of the LIA unfounded, given that at the time of the approval of the provision, the ties between the Libyan government and the Rais were explicit. As for the frozen assets of the Libyan central bank, however, they have been released to allow the NTC to begin the reconstruction of the country. However, since Italy recognized the NTC, various exceptions to the Libyan embargo have been granted, to allow the population to be able to meet basic needs. As Minister Spinedi recalled, the Government immediately provided for a derogation for Eni, which allowed the company to continue to supply electricity also to the cities controlled by Gaddafi, and other derogations for Italian banks, in which assets were frozen Libyans, to allow them to open credit lines towards the NTC guaranteed by them.
ECONOMIC DISPUTES – Among the last to speak at the Sioi conference, Majo's lawyer recalled that many Italian companies have unfinished business in Libya. Before the insurrections began Saipem (Eni) had signed an 800 million dollar agreement to build the first stretch of highway between Benghazi and Egypt and Ansaldo (Finmeccanica) had won a 247 million tender to implement the Sirte railway network -Benghazi. Now it will be necessary to see if the commitments will be respected by the new government. As the professor of international law at Bocconi University Giorgio Sacerdoti underlined: "But what if the new executive preferred to invest that money in education and health care?". The answer is not automatic because Libya is not a signatory to any international dispute settlement agreement. Several proposals on the regulatory frameworks to be used have emerged and the Italian premier Mario Monti with the president of the NTC, Abdel Rahim al-Kib, declared a few months ago that they will undertake to resolve any trade conflicts. But as Luigi Fumagalli, professor of the University of Milan well recalled: "The identification of the regulatory framework is not trivial: the choice of the instrument to be used can change the solution of the process". Everything will depend on the good faith of the parties, but certainly the sooner the political situation stabilizes, the sooner Italian companies will be able to settle any conflicts.
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