LOC12:45
09:45 GMT
LONDON, March 9 (KUNA) -- The whereabouts of the governor of Libya's
central bank, the man who holds the key to the Gaddafi regime's finances, have
confounded officials, diplomats and bankers who have been desperate to find
him over the past two weeks, it was reported here Wednesday.
Farhat Omar Bengdara has spent much of the time since the outbreak of the
uprising against Muammer Gaddafi outside Libya but it is has been unclear
whether he supported the regime or was co-operating with the opposition, the
Financial Times newspaper said.
Late on Tuesday night the governor finally surfaced, in an e-mail sent to
the Financial Times, he said he had been informed that the secretary of
planning and finance had been appointed as acting governor and confirmed that
he had been in Istanbul.
But he insisted that he was doing his job, and that it was easier to
conduct business abroad than in Tripoli.
The statement, however, did not shed much light on the governor's
loyalties, the paper noted.
He said he would resign after the crisis but also that he had been working
hard over the past two weeks to explain the central bank's position and
clarify the effect of the international effort to freeze Libyan assets.
Blocking central bank funds could lead to a humanitarian disaster, he said,
including a reminder that he had always operated in line with regulations and
had modernised the Libyan banking system.
Bankers and opposition figures have been scrambling to decipher Bengdara's
loyalties, as they assume he is one of few officials with authority to shift
funds at a time when sanctions are tightening the squeeze on Col Gaddafi and
his family.
UniCredit, in which Libya has a stake, have been in contact with the
governor, who is a vice-chairman at the Italian bank, after spending a week
trying to track him down.
A European diplomat said he heard the governor had been in Switzerland and
had abandoned the regime.
At the central bank in Tripoli, security guards and receptionists said
three days running this week that the governor was away.
On Tuesday officials said he was in town but out of the office.
The 45-year-old Bengdara, who holds a master's degree in economics from
Sheffield university in the UK, comes from a family in Benghazi, a city in the
east of Libya that has been the centre of the rebellion.
But Libyan opposition figures abroad say he is too closely tied to the
regime and recall that in his younger years he was a member of the
revolutionary committees charged with quashing dissent.
The fate of Bengdara has attracted much attention but bankers say he was
already on his way out before the crisis.
Since taking over at the central bank in 2006 (he was deputy governor
before that), he was considered something of a reformer, opening up the
banking sector to foreign capital, tightening supervision and setting up a
clearing system.
But he was seen to have won his job thanks to Seif-al-Islam, the Gaddafi
son and apparent heir who had championed a more liberal economic system. (end)
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KUNA 091245 Mar 11NNNN