Following the exposure of Belgium's mishandling of Muammar Gaddafi's frozen funds, it turns out that the British government has been collecting taxes on the former head of state's blocked UK assets. British and US lawmakers have discussed the legality of London's move and shared prognoses on whether the money will ever be returned to the Libyans.
Neither the late Muammar Gaddafi nor the citizens of Libya have access to the whopping £12 billion in assets the former head of state had in the UK, but Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has collected around £17 million in taxes on the assets since 2016, according to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee's latest report.
The disclosure has prompted some British lawmakers to demand that London use the money earned in interest on the frozen accounts to compensate the victims of the Irish Republican Army (IRA); the organisation was supplied with weapons and explosives by the Gaddafi government in the 1980s.
The question then arises: it is legal to take money in taxes from the frozen assets of another state?
‘Nothing But Old-Fashioned Bank Robbery'
“In my view there is no legality in that”, said American lawyer and peace activist Dan Kovalik. “This is money that properly belongs to the Libyan people. In fact, what they are doing amounts to theft from the Libyan people, who really could use the money after the NATO bombing of Libya. They left Libya a shattered country. The West has done nothing to help it rebuild. And then to…
