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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 27 February 2019:
The Tripoli Central Bank of Libya (CBL) announced today that it is to recontinue the disbursement of the stalled 2018 US$ 500 /person currency annual allowance as of 3 March.
It stressed that it froze its disbursement not due to lack of funds or for administrative reasons, but as a result of proven cases of ID fraud.
It will be recalled that all Libyan state allowances and salaries are (in theory) only disbursed to Libyan citizens with a valid National ID Number.
These numbers are held on a national database administered by the Civil Registry Authority (CRA).
Earlier this month, the CBL announced that it was freezing the hard currency allowance due to a large number of cases of ID fraud. The announcement caused public dismay. The CBL received heavy criticism and was accused of being miserly with the people’s money.
There then followed a public blame game between the CBL and the CRA where the CRA accused the CBL of exaggerating the ID fraud and refusing several requests to meet to review the database.
In today’s statement the CBL is still insisting that the ID fraud is substantial.
The CBL said that it saw it as its national duty to highlight the ID fraud and point it out to the CRA so that the later can mitigate the fraud.
The CBL said that ID fraud has national security implications and that it continues the strategic work to mitigate ID fraud without any help from the CRA.
The CBL said that it will soon reveal all the proven cases of ID fraud.
