Gaddafi-Inc: About millions, billions & more

Listening to his own account claiming to live on a modest monthly salary of  US$ 400, you would think Gaddafi should be eligible for social security. Never mind that this sum is nowhere nearly enough to cover the cost of his collection of sunglasses and flamboyant robes. Those who believe the Libyan dictator should of course have no problem believing that he also has no official position in Libya and that despite his constant shelling of their cities and towns, all Libyans in fact still  love him. After all,  it is an old saying that love hurts.

By many other accounts, it is a different story and Gaddafi may be worth as much as a $100 billion, if not more. While in the aftermath of the Libyan uprising chunks of this money have been frozen around the world, this may be only the tip of an iceberg. Not counting liquidity and other assets inside Libya itself, $70 billions have been reportedly invested in sovereign wealth funds abroad, under the umbrella of a shady Libyan Investment Authority run by the Gaddafi family and its insiders. In a country where accountability is practically non-existent, many Libyans have been left wondering about where their oil money was going and why they were being kept in the dark about it. Meanwhile, in the country they live in, the infrastructure is in shambles, unemployment, poverty and corruption are rampant and terror rules. Despite its mineral riches and small population count, Gaddafi's Libya suffers from a chronic shortage of housing, lack of basic services and a dire state of both the education and health systems. On a few occasions, sensing their anger, Gaddafi appeased his fellow Libyans with false promises that they would soon get their share of the wealth but then of course failed to deliver. On other occasions, he assured them that he was taking care of their money for them so that they would not waste it away on “silly things such as chewing gum and chocolate”. Most of the time however, he just bluntly told them that oil was simply not theirs and that they should fend off for themselves and perhaps think of emigrating instead to Africa or Europe  since “Libya holds no future for them”.

While most of the Libyans have been suffering in silence, the Gaddafi family has been busy investing and buying assets and luxury property across the globe. In the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, Gaddafi used billions of dollars of Libya's money to bail out his regime. Billions more were spent to gain political influence in Africa and elsewhere. Millions were spent on polishing his image in the West and millions more on New Year’s parties thrown by his sons, in exotic places such as St Bart’s in the Caribbean. The likes of Beyoncé, Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey were paid a million dollar each just to entertain the Gaddafi Juniors here and there, sometimes for less than an hour. There were of course times when bills were not paid by one son or another, for one reason or another. In 2006, during a visit to Sydney, Australia, one of the sons reportedly left the country without paying a $7000 bill at a Sydney brothel and in 2010, Saadi failed to pay a half-million dollar hotel bill in Italy, which led to a court order and an additional fee of 5,000 Euros to be paid on top.

Speaking of money, when he first grabbed power in Libya, Gaddafi had a hard time figuring out how many zeros were in a million, but he was shrewd enough to know how to use the money for maintaining power. In time, he came to know about billions and eventually even trillions. During his infamous 2009 speech at the UN General Assembly, the Libyan dictator said Africa deserves compensation from its past colonizers, a noble idea in itself. After first suggesting a figure of  $7.7 trillion, he hesitated for a few seconds and then changed the amount to $777 trillion. Magic numbers aside, one is left wondering as to how the self-crowned King of Kings came up with this figure, knowing that this year’s size of the whole global economy is less than $70 Trillion. Luckily, the translator stuck with the smaller figure.

Inside Gaddafi's Twisted Mind

Take whatever Moammar Gaddafi says about almost anything, pick a counter-argument and chances are you won't be far off from the truth. Perhaps the most bizarre claim by the Libyan dictator is that he actually does not exercise any power in Libya. To any neutral observer, this would resonate as a clear contradiction to reality that can only speak for itself. Then there is his claim that he does not care to follow international media. This can hardly be believed from a megalomaniac who actually thrives on media attention and who is described in US cables published by Wikileaks as "an avid consumer of TV and print media". What Gaddafi seems to be arguing here is that these media reporting atrocities committed by his regime, should simply not be listened to. Gaddafi is also well aware of the damaging news circulated by international media on his shady bank accounts abroad. In one of his recent ramblings, he indirectly dispelled these allegations by reminding his listeners that his official monthly salary is a mere $350. If this was ever the case, he would obviously not even afford his flamboyant robes and bizarre costumes not to mention the large sums he and his sons afford to throw away around them here and there. Throughout his rule, Gaddafi has been raising false slogans, at times calling for Arab unity and at other times calling for African unity. All along, he has been consistently undermining his own slogans, nourishing tribalism inside Libya and stirring trouble within the Arab World, the African continent and beyond.

In his recent series of self-styled speeches, Gaddafi also kept blaming the current unrest on drugged kids, elements from Al-Qaida and criminals escaping from prisons. His reference to drugs and to Al-Qaida is of course meant to undermine and discredit the genuine popular revolution against his long heavy-handed rule. At the same time, he was sending a message to the West that they should still see in him a potentially reliable anti-terrorist ally, As for escaping criminals, who could make better use of that than the dictator himself? Here was a classical trick used before him by ex-dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt to discredit popular revolts there. It would thus be a no brainer that Gaddafi would himself rush to use such tactics and he apparently ordered that during the early days of the unrest.

Another aspect of Gaddafi's twisted mind is his attitude towards women. His legendary use of female Amazonian bodyguards and a “voluptuous” Ukranian nurse is by now common knowledge. So is his hosting of young Italian models during a 2009 visit to Italy and later the special trips he arranged for them to Libya. According to the Sunday Times, the dictator's name is romantically linked in a court case with the queen mother of a traditional Ugandan kingdom, whom he visited many times. In 2007, during a visit to France by Gaddafi, he was publicly denounced as a “racaille” or thug by a respected French journalist, Memouna Hintermann, who bravely revealed her personal story on how Gaddafi had attempted to rape her during an interview setup in his military barracks during his war in Tchad.

Gaddafi is also known to suffer from a large dose of paranoia. Last week, rebuking Libyans for having taken to the streets against him, he declared himself as "a synonym for glory". This came as he was unleashing his heavily armed thugs and mercenaries to massacre his own people and to finish off what ever remains of a country he worked hard to destroy for over four long decades. To add insult to injury, Gaddafi appears to rejoice in his image of a vicious dictator. When he was orchestrating televised public hangings of political activists in the seventies and eighties, he referred to them as "street cats". Later, as he targeted political opponents in exile, he called them "stray dogs". Today, as freedom fighters rise to challenge his rule, he is now referring to them as rats. By all accounts, behind this vicious facade, there are signs of a trembling and much worried dictator who sees his end near and is using excess terror to hide his fear and cowardliness. As the popular uprising intensifies and more of his cronies and supporters leave his sinking ship, time seems to be running out for Gaddafi and the Libyan people may soon be the ones cornering a fleeing rat.