Libyan Post boss brings operation to Malta

Matthew Vella

Libya’s state-owned institutions have continued to relocate their businesses to Malta, as a mass exodus of private and public sector business leaves the conflict-ridden state to operate from its stable neighbour.

Faisel Gergab, boss of the Libyan Post, Telecommunications and Information Technology Company (LPTIC), set up a new subsidiary, LPTIC Services in Malta earlier this month.

According to Africa Intelligence, LPTIC controls Libya’s telecoms operators LTT, Libyana, and Al Madar – at least on paper – and monitors all contracts to install optic fibre and wireless networks.

The company set up its offices at Oilinvest House on Triq il-Falkun, in San Gwann, where the Tamoil Africa Holdings and Chempetrol operations are already housed. They are both subsidiaries of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) on whose board Gergab sits.

Oilinvest emerged in the 1980s after Libya’s acquisition of the two formerly Lebanese-controlled companies, Tamoil and Gatoil. Tamoil was considered the biggest unit in the group, handling most of the crude oil Oilinvest lifts from Libya for processing in Europe.

Described as the National Oil Corporation’s international arm, Oilinvest (Netherlands) B.V. and Oilinvest (Curacao) were founded to take a majority interest in Tamoil, the successor to Amoco and Texaco’s loss-making Italian operations – namely some 2,000 service stations, 600 miles of pipeline and the Cremona refinery.

The Dutch and Maltese operations allowed the NOC to avoid sanctions imposed upon the Gaddafi regime in the 1980s and 1990s.

Gergab also set up the Libyan Investment Authority’s sovereign fund LIA Advisory in Malta, back in December last year. The other directors

are Osama Siala, the new chairman of LIA appointed by the internationally-recognised government in Tobruk, Hassan Ahmed Bouhadi, and managing director Ahmed Ali Attiga, a former World Bank official.