The two claimants to the position of Chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) in Tripoli and Tobruk, AbdulMagid Breish and Fawzi Omran Farkash, met on August 29 to resolve the long-running dispute between the LIA in Tripoli and the parallel LIA operation in Tobruk.

Both sides agreed to restore the LIA’s Litigation Committee, which was originally established by the Tripoli-based LIA’s Chairman, Breish, in 2013 with the aim to supervise the international litigations he initiated to recover sums that were misappropriated from the Libyan people, including those misappropriated by Goldman Sachs and Société Générale. 

In a statement on September 01, the Tripoli-based LIA explained that the former leader of the LIA in Tobruk, Hassan Bouhadi, unilaterally dissolved the committee in 2015 and subsequently refused to consider several compromise proposals, resulting in unnecessary costs, delays and complications to the LIA’s litigations. 

“The restored Litigation Committee will be composed of Mr Fawzi Omran Farkash, Mustafa Ismail, Sami Rais and Ali Baruni. The chairmanship of the committee will rotate between these members. It will hold an initial meeting on or before 8 September 2016, at which point it will name its first Chairman.” The statement remarked.

The two LIA’s chairmen also agreed during the meeting to jointly strive to maintain the international sanctions currently in place against the majority of the LIA’s $67 billion of assets until appropriate circumstances allow the sanctions to be lawfully lifted.

“We also discussed the possibility of merging the two boards of directors of the LIA to establish a single, united board. Substantial progress was made on this point, and further discussions are expected in the coming days.” The LIA’s statement indicated.

Both Breish and Farkash also expressed no satisfaction about the role of the Presidential Council of the UN-proposed government, pointing out that its  purported appointment of a steering committee (through Resolution 115 of 15 August 2016) to manage the LIA was illegal, and was actually not in the best interests of the sovereign wealth fund nor was it in the best interests of Libya. 

“The LIA’s administrations in Tripoli and Tobruk have each initiated actions to contest the Presidential Council’s resolution through the Libyan judicial system as we possess many documents that prove it null.” The statement adds.

 

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