Maltese bank ordered to return Gaddafi funds to Libya

Reuters
·1 min read
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VALLETTA, June 28 (Reuters) - A court has ordered Malta's Bank of Valletta to return to Libya some 95 million euros ($100.1 million) deposited by a son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The sentence was delivered on Tuesday at the end of a legal battle that started a year after Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011.

The funds were deposited by Gaddafi's son Mutassim as the owner of a Maltese-registered company with Bank of Valletta accounts.

Mutassim Gaddafi was found to be in possession of several of the bank's credit cards when he was killed in Misrata on October 20, 2011.

The Malta court case was brought by Libya's attorney-general, who argued that Bank of Valletta had failed to carry out proper due diligence checks that should have prevented Mutassim Gaddafi opening an account in the first place.

A lawyer for Muammar Gaddafi's heirs, Charilos Oikonomopoulos, argued that the money was private funds and not pilfered from the Libyan state. ($1 = 0.9493 euros) (Reporting by Chris Scicluna, writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)