The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the war-torn country’s sovereign wealth fund, is making a fresh push to water down some of the international sanctions it has been under since the revolution which ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi from power nine years ago.
“We are not asking for sanctions to be lifted or for assets to be unfrozen,” says LIA chairman Dr Ali Mahmoud Hassan Mohammed (Dr Mahmoud). “But we need a modification of the sanctions regime because the LIA is now incurring losses in some of its investments as a result of the way in which the UN sanctions operate.”
The fund was first hit by an asset freeze in 2011, via a United Nations Security Council resolution and those restrictions remain in place on most of the its assets outside Libya. Although they have caused difficulties for the fund, the LIA says it does not want them completely removed.
