In a widely leaked letter on Libyan media news sites yesterday, the Attorney General (AG), Sideeg Al-Sour, instructed Farhat Bengdara, the chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), to stop the procedures for settling any Libya debts abroad referred to in the letter the NOC received from Saddek El-Kaber, the Governor of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL).
The Attorney General stated that such payments should cease until a mechanism is established based on the provisions of the document titled “Road Map, Preliminary Phase for a Comprehensive Solution.”
The instruction refers to the NOC paying some of Libya’s overseas debts, including those in Tunisia. The idea is that the procedure through the NOC is quicker as the NOC gets paid for its oil exports in hard currency. But it also bypasses the bureaucratic process of paying through the CBL.
However, the procedure could be abused and used to bypass the monitoring of the Audit Bureau, and more significantly, during a time when the Tripoli based Libyan government is amid a tug-of-war with the CBL over the size of its expenditures, it could be seen as a rouse to bypass the purse string-tightening of the CBL.
