Libya’s Presidential Council, led by Mohammed Al-Menfi, will launch an inquiry this week into “allegations of wholesale mismanagement in the country’s National Oil Corporation”, the scope of which is likely to also cover “the widespread practice of fuel smuggling and its key beneficiaries,” British newspaper The Guardian reports.
Unnamed officials told The Guardian that widespread smuggling was helping to “provide fuel to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces fighting in Sudan”.
“Some of the money may also be going indirectly to the Russia-backed Wagner Group, now rebranded as the Africa Corps,” reports The Guardian.
Libya is torn apart by political and security crisis which allowed for human and oil trafficking to spread.
The Presidential Council, which is yet to make an official announcement of the investigation, is among the bodies whose expired mandate played a role in exacerbating the conflict over political legitimacy.
Despite centering its mission on reconciliation and inclusivity, the council, under Menfi, has failed to hold its long-promised national reconciliation conference which is supposed to bring together the country’s political and social stakeholders.
In a blow to the Presidential Council’s reconciliation efforts, the Libyan National Amy (LNA) suspended its participation in the conference’s Preparatory Committee in protest against the council’s backtrack on its own decision to list the army’s dead and missing soldiers and their families in the General Authority for the Care of the Families of Martyrs and Missing Persons.