An investigative film by Dutch filmmakers Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom put the question of the disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi’s fortune in 2011 back on the table. They claim that at least part of “12.5 billion dollars” is in “South Africa”, under the protection of “ex-President Zuma”.
Since its fall in 2011 following the illegal intervention of NATO under French instigation, the fate of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s fortune has remained an enigma to this day. After a trip to Libya, where people were struck by the poverty in which the population was living, Dutch filmmakers Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom decided to investigate the billions of Libyan dollars that have disappeared from circulation.
After three years of investigation, they deliver the results in a film worthy of a detective thriller entitled “In Search of Gaddafi’s Billions”. Indeed, according to them, a good part of this money landed in “South Africa” under the benevolent eye of his “ex-President Jacob Zuma (2009-2018)”.
In the wake of the investigation, “a Serbian spy” was found dead, following a meeting with them during which he showed them “photos of Libyan containers stuffed with dollars” which arrived in “South Africa”.
Gaddafi’s decision
In their film, Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom claim that in 2011 no less than “179 Libyan commercial aircraft transported billions of dollars to South Africa in total opacity”.
According to them, it was “Muammar Gaddafi himself” who took the decision to distribute his money in several countries around the world, after measuring the gravity of the situation in his country following the popular uprising.
Collaborators of the Libyan leader explained that “Gaddafi’s intention was to save this money in order to use it to finance the war against the aggressors in his country that he had never considered leaving”. “He was convinced that this war was going to last a long time,” they added.
South Africa, one of the main suspects?
The two directors of the film accuse the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), of being behind the decision to conceal Libyan money of $12.5 billion, which only “an international effort would succeed in bringing them back to Libya”.
Solicited on this issue by the Al-Jazeera channel, Thomas Blom said that “all the evidence collected converges on the fact that it is the former South African President, Jacob Zuma, who is himself responsible for the sequestration of Libyan funds”. To this end, he called on the ANC leadership “to open a transparent investigation into this matter in order to get to the bottom of this affair”.
Witness murdered
While the operation to transfer the Libyan money to South Africa had been carried out with the utmost discretion, Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom report that an eyewitness who accidentally saw one of the unloading operations “of Libyan containers full of dollars” had managed “to take photos”. The same witness later informed a Serbian spy living in the country and gave him the pictures.
Thus, the filmmakers stress that they “managed to meet the Serbian agent who made these photos available”. “The spy was murdered a few days after this interview by two men whose identity is still unknown,” they said.
Finally, the film explains that the money allegedly sequestered in South Africa is only part of the sum transferred in cash on Gaddafi’s orders to countries where he believed he had “very influential friends”.
