Governor al-Seddiq Omar al-Kabir, the head of Libya's Central Bank, denied reports coming out of the nation's foreign ministry that the West had returned $20 billion in seized assets to the new Libyan government.
"We never received the $20 billion," Kabir reported, addressing the claims made by Foreign Minister Ashur bin Khayyal earlier this week that the money, held by the US, France, and other EU member nations, had already been returned.
The $20 billion was supposed to be the first of an estimated $150 billion in overseas cash returned to the Libyan government after it was frozen by UN Security Council sanctions during the NATO summer attack on Libya.
The US has claimed it freed up more than $30 billion of Libyan assets to be made available to the new NATO-backed regime, but it seems that freeing it up and actually giving it to them are two very different things, and the central bank is still waiting on the actual money.
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