Freezing of Libyan assets was “scandalous” – former PM Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici

Former prime minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, the man who saved Col. Muammar Gaddafi's life during the 1986 bombing by US warplanes of his Bab Azizija compound, has criticised the freezing of Libyan assets as a "dangerous and unsightly move" and an attack on Libyans' private property.

Mifsud Bonnici said that the Libyan assets, €377 million of which were in Malta, was investment that yielded income for the Libyan people through their government and companies, "as well as to support the economies of the foreign countries where the investments were made,” he said.

“Libyan companies in Malta provided employment for Maltese workers,” he added.

Mifsud Bonnici argued that every country makes efforts towards attracting investment, adding that this is founded through assurances to protect those investments so that those who invest are assured that their capital is not lost “and should be able to take it back when it sees fit.”

“When a government freezes assets belonging to a foreign country, it is failing in its obligation to protect the right of that country to its own assets,” he said, warning that countries that fear that a government might freeze their assets would not be willing to invest.

“Those governments that froze Libyan assets carried out a dangerous and unsightly move as the Libyan government and companies whose assets were frozen owe no debt to anyone,” he reiterated.

Mifsud Bonnici - whose controversial role in divesting the BICAL business empire has been well documented by MaltaToday - said that the right to private property was "a fundamental one" and that governments who froze Libyan assets breached this right.

“It is disgraceful that the United Nations and the European Union committed this breach of a fundamental right to private property. The same can be said of the Maltese government,” he said.

He also slammed how a portion of the frozen Libyan assets will be handed over to the rebel council, saying that not only are governments keeping investments out of their owners’ hands, but “are also passing them on to others who do not own them.”

“The assets of the Libyan government should be taken back by the Libyan government, whoever it is, and the assets belonging to Libyan companies should be taken by those companies, whoever they might be run by,” he said.

He said that should the frozen assets be passed onto to the National Transitional Council “would be a breach of basic legal principles of every civilised country.”

“If there is an issue over who these assets belong to, it should be the courts who decide, not for governments to arbitrarily determine according to political whims,” he added.

Late last month, Malta froze €377 million in Libyan government assets. Of these, €86 million alone belonged to the Gaddafi family, or entities in which they were majority stakeholders. In the US, over $30 billion of Libyan assets were similarly frozen.

In early July, Foreign Minister Tonio Borg has committed further Maltese assistance to the Benghazi based Libyan Transitional Council, by promising an exchange in value of frozen Libyan assets by Malta with aid to Benghazi.