Libya’s Administrative Control Authority (ACA) announced last Monday (13 January) that it is to continue the legal freeze on the stalled Ghazala Hotel Project due to mismanagement, intention to manipulate funds and suspicious movements in the accounts to profit the foreign project partner.
The ACA is a state oversight agency like the Audit Bureau.
The news came after the Chairman of the ACA, Abdullah Gaderbo, held a meeting on the same day at the ACA’s headquarters with the Chairman and members of the Board of Directors of Al-Ghazala Tourism Investment Company (one of the subsidiaries of Alinma Tourism Investment Holding Company), to discuss the obstacles to completing the Al-Ghazala Hotel (The Gazelle) project in the capital, Tripoli.
The meeting was to review the stages and rates of completion, the company’s capital and partners’ contributions, and the loan amounts allocated by some commercial banks for the project and their disbursements.
Project stalled for more than 14 years
The meeting also discussed the engineering and financial challenges facing the project, to ensure its completion in light of the successive losses suffered and the project’s inactivity for more than fourteen years.
Project legally frozen since 2015
The ACA said the meeting comes within the framework of its follow-up on the project, and the results of the field visit conducted by its presidency to the hotel site on 29 December 2024, and the imposition of the accompanying legal control over its work, and the freezing of its accounts since 2015 until now.
Mismanagement, manipulation of funds
This freeze comes after the ACA confirmed that there was evidence of mismanagement of the project and the intention to manipulate its funds, and after recording suspicious movements in the accounts, and profiting the foreign partner through it, and harming public money.
Project freeze to continue until holding of expanded meeting of all stakeholders
As a result of the meeting, the ACA reported that its chairman stressed the need to continue freezing all project accounts, including the salary account, until the removal of precautionary measures taken by the ACA to ensure the success of the project and the disbursement of its funds as allocated for it, in order to preserve and maintain public money,
The ACA also said it needs to carry out its national duty by holding an expanded meeting that includes all parties concerned with the project, in order to solve its problems and difficulties in order to achieve a return for the state and contribute to its renaissance.
ACA suspends appointment of new state sector jobs and state scholarships
