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Libya Has Nearly $200 Million In Gold In A Safe. There’s Only One Problem.

   DailyWire.com

Libya is plagued by a massive financial crisis. No, not Puerto Rico or Detroit-style debt, but the kind of economic collapse you get from years of bloody civil war and carnage. Desperate for money, it has at least a temporary solution: approximately $184 million in gold and silver coins locked in a vault. Only problem is they don’t have the code to get in.

Islamist rebels and paramilitary groups have laid waste to vast swaths of Libyan land, establishing colonial outposts. There is no political infrastructure. Beneath the rubble, a handful of polities have emerged, staking claim to the war-torn banner of Libyan nationalism. While various factions lord over small municipalities, two primary governments have consolidated the most resources and territory to garner some air of regional legitimacy.

A significant portion of the international community now recognizes only one of these rival governments, a polity run by the Trans-National Libyan Council in the east, as legitimate. The opposing government is located in Tripoli, a major port city in Libya. Foreign Affairs elaborates:

There are now two governments in Libya. One is in the eastern city of Tobruk, backed by the rump of the elected parliament, the House of Representatives (HOR). The other, based in the capital, Tripoli, has taken de facto control over ministries, relying on a handful of former members of the HOR’s predecessor, the General National Congress (GNC), to provide a veneer of legitimacy. Each is associated with a coalition of militia forces: those supporting the rump parliament have dubbed themselves Operation Dignity; those opposing it go by Operation Dawn.

Both of these governments are cash-strapped. The eastern government’s officials may have found a temporary solution. There’s only problem though: the money the government needs is locked away in a vault and those that know the vault’s code are unwilling to cooperate. Why you may ask? Well, the only people that have both the code and the blueprint to the vault are embedded in Tripoli and loyal to the rival government.

The vault approximately $184 million in gold and silver coins. Adding insult to injury, these coins feature the face of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, a man abhorred on the streets of Libya.

“I can’t sell them as they are,” Ali El Hibri, the central bank governor in eastern Libya, tells The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t want to cause any controversy in the street by advertising the face of Gadhafi.” The Journal explains Hibri’s impossible conundrum in further detail:

Mr. Hibri said he is waiting for a shipment of fresh currency from a foreign printing house totaling four billion dinar, or close to $3 billion. But the cash infusion isn’t expected for months. So the central bank chief, whose yellow-tinted spectacles obscure tired eyes, has turned to the Gadhafi coins.

Desperate to get his hands on the coins, Hibri, under his authority as the governor of the central bank, has called for help, recruiting two men who gained a reputation breaking locks in post-Gadhafi Libya. “He is betting on a famous pair of safecrackers—the same duo that successfully gained access to several regime vaults that helped fund the 2011 rebellion.

“One of them, who would identify himself only as Khaled, is an engineer,” reports The Journal. “He named his partner as a Mr. al-Fitouri, a locksmith who specializes in busting open car doors, home locks and the odd vault.”

With rumors of government corruption abound, ordinary Libyans are skeptical about the operations of the central bank and the machinations of those that have managed to temporarily seize power in the midst of civil war.

According to the Centre for Research Globalization, “the situation in Libya is continuing to develop alarmingly. The current situation in the country is characterized by a complete lack of any signs of a state system. Libya is being devoured by civil war, disintegration, and the seizure of its territory by a huge variety of forces, most notably the Islamic State.”

Without Gaddafi, the state of Libya has devolved into a no-man’s land, drawing in foreign fighters and gun smugglers quickly, with many establishing a base of operations in the country. Public employees haven’t been paid for months, basic civic duties have been neglected, and assurance of security have become all but pipe dreams.

If the central bank in eastern Libya gets its hands on the coins stashed in the vault, the government there may enjoy transient economic relief, but on a grand-scale, it matters little. Libya is at war, and there’s no sign it will end any time soon.

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