The West Is Shocked–Shocked!–to Find Qaddafi’s Loot in their Casinos!
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Now that they’re dancing on Moammar Qaddafi’s grave (or would be, if the rebels would end the trophy show of his body so he can be buried), they’re no doubt faced with a dilemma.
How to get all the money they bribed Qaddafi with over the years back into circulation, paying for consultants on reconstruction and generating fees for their banks?
I expect we’ll see a series of articles like this one, expressing shock–shock!–that Qaddai managed to loot $200 billion from his country.
Moammar Kadafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed, about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected, according to senior Libyan officials.
The new estimates of the deposed dictator’s hidden cash, gold reserves and investments are “staggering,” one person who has studied detailed records of the asset search said Friday. “No one truly appreciated the scope of it.”
Oh, I’m sure some people “appreciated the scope of it”–like the Goldman Sachs banksters who “lost” almost all of Libya’s investment fund for it. And it’s not like our government hasn’t been fully aware this has been going on. That’s all before you assume we’ve been using SWIFT to monitor Qaddafi’s looting in the name of counterterrorism.
Better for those who want to continue to profit off this money to express shock, though, or Libyans and others might cop on that the big play here is to continue to profit.
(In related news, see this Real News Network video on the looting in Sub-Saharan Africa.)
What was that clever scheme that David Rockefeller used to take all of Iran’s money after the Shah was hounded out of the country? Something about using the seized assets to pay off the debts that were still outstanding? It didn’t work out so well in the long run (or even the short run) for the U.S., but Chase Manhattan did all right.
It might pay to reread Nicholas Shaxson’s Treasure Islands. Hiding tyrants’ misbegotten billions is a feature of offshore havens, and the US has become the biggest tax evasion enabler of them all (though London’s financial center, known simply as the City, keeps abreast of it stride for stride).
about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen.
The checks are in the mail to all Libyan citizens right;)
OT– “The Revenge of the Electric Car” (trailer) is out in theaters.
Just like in those Econ101 circular flow diagrams, you know, with the injections and leakages.