The French newspaper “Le Parisien” said the investigation authorities in France were able to seize a huge amount of money that belonged to Muammar Gaddafi and was stolen from a bank in Benghazi in 2017.
The newspaper said that the value of these funds amounts to 160 million euros, considering that finding these amounts is a “major seizure” for Libyan banknotes in European countries.
According to the newspaper, one of the investigators stated that the first thread was the arrest of a married couple in France while trying to sell damaged banknotes for less than the official value.
It was found that the looted money dates back to 2017, during the war that the Libyan National Army waged against extremist armed groups inside the city of Benghazi, where 160 million euros were found in the bank’s basement: 100 and 200 types, some of which were damaged.
The French newspaper indicated that in 2010 the Libyan authorities withdrew this huge amount from the German Central Bank for an unknown reason, and it was decided to deposit it in a bank in Benghazi.
A judicial source told the newspaper that 80 million euros of intact banknotes were either cashed out urgently or deposited in other banks.
In a later development, during the summer of 2018, the European Central Bank was notified that some banknotes had reappeared in Europe by people holding Turkish citizenship, and some of them were found by Moroccan employees who came to exchange banknotes obtained illegally from Turkish contractors.
It emerged later that the arrested spouses were getting money from Turkey, and that they had spent 40.000 euros.
