By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 9 April 2017:
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) has agreed to use a Moroccan bank in a deal that would seem to be a challenge to the Presidency Council’s Resolution number 292 which gives the PC a large measure of control over NOC’s affairs.
NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla has agreed in principle to work with the Banque Marocaine du Commerce Exterieur (BMCE) as one of its commercial banks.
NOC says that the key part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which Sanalla signed on Friday in Vienna with the bank’s chief executive Ibrahim Benjelloun Altouimi is that the BMCE will help bring in new investors, something which the PC appeared to reserve to itself.
An announcement on the state oil company’s web site reads that BMCE would help with “arrangements for financing projects when necessary and attracting new investments in addition to presenting studies and research and providing investigation and information on companies and institutions that wish to register with the National Oil Corporation.”
Unless Sanalla’s MoU with the Moroccan bank was approved by the PC, it would seem to fly in the face of Resolution 292 which deprives NOC of close management of its oil properties in terms of both capital investment and day-to-day trading.
Sanalla has protested that only parliament has the right to change the Articles of Association under which NOC operates and therefore the PC’s move is illegal.
NOC published a picture of the signing of the MoU but the man with whom Sanalla is shaking hands does not appear to be the same Brahim Benjelloun-Touimi shown on the BMCE web site as the Group Executive Managing Director.
