Okay, call holding for Trey Gowdy…perhaps he should know about lifted sanctions where surely a certain server has some emails. Seems there are billions at stake even today and Hillary knew it and frankly still does know it. So many more moving parts. Going back to 2011….
Libyan Power Struggle Threatens Fund’s Goldman, SocGen Suits
A fight for control of Libya’s $60 billion sovereign wealth fund threatens to derail its multibillion dollar lawsuits against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA.
Since the Libyan Investment Authority’s London law firm quit in April, two competing factions have claimed control, hiring separate lawyers and public relations firms.
There is a “state of chaos” in the litigation, lawyer Andrew Hunter told a London judge Friday. He represents a potential witness in the Societe Generale case who says confidential files have been mishandled.
“It hasn’t been possible to get consent from the LIA” over the documents, Hunter said, “because there is no one at the LIA to get consent from.”
Libya’s sovereign wealth fund sued Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale, each for more than $1 billion, over investment deals that turned sour. Since the cases were filed last year, armed conflict between rival administrations in Tripoli and Tobruk has led to escalating violence and turmoil in the North African nation, ruled for 42 years by dictator Muammar Qaddafi before his death in 2011.
The Libyan Investment Authority has been shrouded in secrecy.
In one of Africa’s largest and most secretive foreign agricultural investment deals, oil-rich Libya, under the leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, signed a 50-year, renewable lease for the land with Mali’s government in 2008.
The land in the Office of Niger, the agricultural heart of the West African country, was provided rent free, with water rights included, on the condition that Libya build canals and roads to cultivate rice and cattle there. Read more here.
Hillary had sanctions lifted.
U.S. Seeks to Use Frozen Gadhafi Assets to Aid Rebels
The U.S. is moving to free up more than $30 billion in frozen Libyan assets, a small part of which would go to fund opposition forces, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, in a move that could bolster a world-wide effort to finance Libya’s struggling rebel movement.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with other top diplomats in Rome, Mrs. Clinton said the Obama administration was working with Congress to pass legislation allowing the Treasury Department to release Gadhafi-regime assets that it had frozen earlier this year in the wake of the Libyan dictator’s violent crackdown on protesters.
Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, told reporters in Tripoli that giving the frozen assets to the rebels would be illegal, “like piracy on the high seas.”
In a first step, once the funds are unfrozen, the U.S. is considering sending more than $150 million to humanitarian agencies for use in rebel territory, a State Department official said.
The U.S. efforts come as 22 nations agreed at a meeting in Rome Thursday to set up an internationally monitored multibillion-dollar fund aimed at helping Libya’s rebel government, the Transitional National Council, fund basic provisions such as food and medicine, pay military salaries and rebuild hospitals and schools, according to several officials at the meeting.
The allied countries have already pledged $250 million in humanitarian aid, said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Money from the fund won’t be used to pay for arms, said Mahmoud Jibril, the Libyan rebel group’s de-facto foreign minister, who also attended the meeting.
“Two weeks ago nobody was talking about… giving the [rebels] the means to defend themselves, but now I think it’s more accepted,” Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani said after the meeting.
Sheikh Hamad added that the fund would be overseen by a five-member board, including three people appointed by the rebel council, one named by Qatar and another representing France and Italy on a six-month rotating basis.
Officials envisioned that the fund could in part be filled by assets of the Gadhafi government that have over the past few months been frozen by the United Nations and the European Union.
In March, the E.U. froze foreign assets owned by the Gadhafi family and the dictator’s close lieutenants. The E.U. also froze stakes that Libya’s central bank and its sovereign-wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority, hold in large European companies, ranging from banks to defense contractors.
On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury department announced that it planned to freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction that are linked to Libya’s state broadcaster and two Libyan investment funds.
For the U.S., however, unlocking and using the frozen Gadhafi-government funds is difficult for legal reasons. Though the U.S. has allocated $25 million to help the rebels procure supplies, Washington hasn’t recognized the rebel leadership council as Libya’s rightful government—as some European countries have done—complicating the U.S.’s ability to provide funding.
If Congress passes legislation allowing those frozen assets to be tapped “we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people,” Mrs. Clinton said at the meeting.
Mrs. Clinton also called on her counterparts to turn up diplomatic pressure on Col. Gadhafi by sending envoys to Benghazi. Isolating his regime, she said, “includes suspending the operations of Gadhafi’s embassies and expelling pro-Gadhafi diplomats, as the U.S. and other countries have done, and sending envoys to Benghazi and facilitating the creation of [Transitional National Council] representative offices in capitals world-wide.”
The U.S. has sent an envoy to Benghazi. Mahmoud Jibril, the rebels’ de facto foreign minister, is expected visit Washington next week and meet with Treasury officials.
During the meeting, the group of allies also discussed conditions for security a cease-fire in Libya that would include easing the departure of the Gadhafi family from Libya and urging the country’s national assembly to write a new constitution, Mr. Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, said. He said “a few weeks is a realistic period” to secure a truce.
The connection between Hillary Clinton, Libya, Goldman Sachs and the Rebels which later became Isis and the money trail while Hillary Clinton was Sec. of State. And don’t forget to add in the Clinton Foundation in the mix. The question is when will Hillary Clinton pull out of the race and when will she be arrested for her crimes?