Illegal arrest and detention of Libyan Asset Recovery head reflects worsening Libyan corruption

Endemic corruption in Libya continues to deter foreign investment, cripple public services, and erode trust in government. In the past year, Libya fell to its lowest-ever ranking in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, tying for 173rd place with Yemen, Equatorial Guinea, and Eritrea — just four spots from the bottom. Similarly, the US Department of State’s 2024 foreign investment evaluation found that business licenses in Libya are typically granted through corruption and exploitation rather than objective criteria. The World Bank’s Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance has consistently given Libya a score of zero out of five, reflecting a system entirely bereft of transparency or accountability.

These dismal rankings mirror the ongoing power struggles among Libya’s political and military elite, who have not permitted parliamentary elections since June 2014. The country’s internationally recognized governing bodies still derive their authority from the 2015 Libyan Political Accord, and to maintain power, they rely on extensive patronage networks. These networks, in turn, depend on corruption to siphon off Libya’s oil revenues, distribute lucrative government contracts to loyalists, facilitate oil smuggling, abuse letters of credit, and traffic Syrian-produced Captagon. Corruption also extends to the judicial system, where courts are manipulated to conduct sham trials for political and financial gain — an issue comprehensively documented in The Sentry’s November 2023 report, Libya’s Kleptocratic Boom.

Over the past decade, local kleptocratic militias have provided muscle to both the Tripoli-based (and internationally recognized) “Government of National Unity,” headed by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, and its rival, the provisional “Government of National Stability” in Benghazi, backed by warlord Khalifa Hifter, his sons, and House of Representatives Speaker Aguila Saleh Issa.

The military stalemate that has remained since Hifter’s failed 2019-20 effort to seize Tripoli by force has been maintained in part through an array of illicit revenue-sharing arrangements involving Libyan oil exports. But as the rivals do business, they are intensifying efforts to weaken other potential threats. Instead of attacking one another, bad actors in both Libya’s east and west have undertaken a spree of arbitrary arrests and detentions that the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has now warned are not only illegal, but creating “a climate of fear.”

Politically motivated arrests

In its March 22 public statement, UNSMIL found that hundreds of Libyans had been illegally arrested and detained by a range of Libyan security forces, including prosecutors, lawyers, and even officials appointed by the government whose bodies arrested them. Significantly, this last category includes Mohammed Mensli, head of the Libyan Asset Recovery and Management Office (LARMO), just as he was on the verge of making potentially significant recoveries of stolen Libyan assets.

In late December, officials at the Tripoli-based Administrative Control Authority (ACA), a post-Gadhafi anti-corruption investigative body, accused Mensli of unauthorized asset recovery efforts and holding dual nationality — charges he has denied. Notably, the decision was made immediately after a Libyan Supreme Court ruling had affirmed LARMO’s exclusive authority over such recoveries.

Mensli voluntarily returned to Tripoli to confront these allegations, only to be arrested on Jan. 7 and placed in pre-trial detention. Since then, his captors have continued to hold him without trial, in direct violation of Libyan law, which mandates that detentions cannot exceed 30 days without referral to public prosecution. More than 75 days have passed, yet no such referral has been made, leaving Mensli in legal limbo without any hearing or presentation of evidence against him. As UNSMIL found, those holding Mensli have largely denied him access to legal representation and medical care amid concerning reports of his deteriorating health.

On March 3, the Social Council of the Warfalla Tribes, Mensli’s tribal group, demanded his immediate and unconditional release, condemning his detention as “a blatant violation of all local laws and international conventions.” The council also warned that his imprisonment was part of an orchestrated effort by “corruption networks … to loot the Libyan state.”

LARMO’s mission and the threat to Libya’s stolen wealth

Since his appointment as director-general of LARMO in 2021 by Prime Minister Dbeibeh, Mensli has led efforts to trace, recover, and manage stolen Libyan assets worldwide. Under his leadership, LARMO has reportedly identified tens — possibly hundreds — of billions of dollars in stolen assets, including stocks, bonds, real estate, jewelry, gold, aircraft, and yachts, held across Africa, Europe, and North America. Over a four-year period, Mensli had been consulting international bodies such as the United Nations and European Union, and national law enforcement agencies like the US Department of Justice and the UK National Crime Agency, with a program to ensure both that stolen Libyan assets would be recovered safely and then protected from raids by corrupt Libyan actors.

In pursuit of these twin objectives, LARMO has insisted on establishing internationally supervised financial controls to prevent recovered Libyan stolen assets from being looted again. Mensli has maintained that, with such safeguards in place, recovered funds should ultimately be used for Libyan hospitals, schools, infrastructure, sustainable energy, and food security — but only after national elections restore legitimacy to Libya’s government.

A power grab disguised as a criminal investigation

Patience and safeguards are both critical to properly recovering and protecting stolen assets, as reflected in Mensli’s methodical effort to design a mechanism to ensure funds turned over to LARMO have sufficient controls to prevent them from being stolen again. Mensli’s continuing imprisonment suggests that those associated with his captivity are attempting to force him to disclose sensitive financial intelligence with the goal of enabling them to seize control of recovered assets for their own gain in the absence of any controls at all.

In the past weeks, Mensli’s unlawful detention has been escalated to senior officials in multiple countries, as UNSMIL worked behind the scenes to secure his release. Unable to make progress, UNSMIL then issued last weekend’s scathing statement, which warned that the wave of illegal arrests and detentions simultaneously threatened political dissent, judicial independence, and rule of law.

UNSMIL’s call for Mensli’s release and that of other Libyans unlawfully languishing in prison has yet to be echoed publicly by other major international actors with interests in Libya. Senior US and British officials responsible for Libyan policy were told about Mensli’s arrest within a few days of his arbitrary detention, and they have continued to meet with Dbeibeh and a wide range of other relevant Libyan actors, while Mensli has languished in prison. Now that UNSMIL has weighed in loudly to call for his release, it will be important for them to express their views publicly, too.

It is clear why corrupt Libyan officials might see an opportunity to profit from Mensli’s removal, but it is far less clear why the Dbeibeh government, which appointed him, has remained silent. By failing to intervene, Dbeibeh’s administration is not only jeopardizing Libya’s recovery of stolen wealth but also reinforcing the very corruption that has crippled the country for years. In the meantime, Mensli’s indefinite detention serves as yet another dark proof-point in Libya’s ever-deepening history of state-sanctioned corruption. Should he be released, Libya still has the opportunity to build out mechanisms for recovering its lost wealth to enable such funds to be used at some future point as a foundation to help the country rebuild.

 

Jonathan M. Winer is a Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at the Middle East Institute. He previously served as the United States special envoy for Libya and the deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement. 

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