Gadhafi Stashed Cash on Wall Street

Moammar Gadhafi has a hefty chunk of Libya's money parked right here on Wall Street. The advocacy group Global Witness has released a document revealing that Libya’s sovereign wealth fund has invested $53 billion with help from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, and European bank Société Générale. The group’s calling for an investigation into “whether these banks have done enough to ensure that state funds have not been diverted to the Gadhafi family.”

“Gadhafi makes no distinction between his personal assets and the resources of the country.” says a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. The investments appear to have been legal when Gadhafi made them, and the funds held in the US should now be frozen, according to the New York Times, which verified the documents. In addition to parking the money in the banks mentioned, Libya has also bought stock a lot of US bonds, and owns stock in such big-name companies as General Electric, Halliburton, BP, and Nokia. (More Libya stories.)