TRIPOLI: The government said yesterday it did not receive any communication from the Libyan Parliament on fresh claims of oil and fuel smuggling from the North African country.
However, the Foreign Affairs Ministry did not comment on claims of rampant oil smuggling from Libya to Malta, which has allegedly been going on since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime.
According to the Libyan Herald, the chairman of the Libyan Parliament’s Economy Committee, Ali Gatrani, has sent an official letter to the Maltese Ambassador in Tripoli complaining of continuous oil smuggling between Libya and Malta.
The newspaper said the committee expected the Maltese authorities to stop the illicit trade.
“The smuggling is negatively affecting the Libyan economy and the income is used by smugglers to trade in illicit goods such as drugs and alcohol, which affects Libyan security. The illicit gains are also financing terrorism,” Mr Gatrani wrote, the Libyan newspaper reported.
This is not the first time such claims have been made.
In 2014, during a visit to Malta, then prime minister Abdullah Thinni had called upon the Maltese government to take action against those involved in the smuggling of fuel from Libya to Malta. He had said the smuggling was on a large scale and was affecting the national security of Libya.
The issue was recently also highlighted by the United Nations.
According to a report presented to the Security Council last March, fuel smuggling from Libya to Malta is continuing unabated and is helping to finance militia operations. The report zeroed-in on a network of smugglers, masterminded by Fahmi Ben Khalifa, a shareholder in ADJ Trading, a Maltese-registered company.
According to the report, ships hired by the Maltese company would sail south to between 40 and 60 nautical miles off the Libyan coast, where they turned off the automated identification system and loaded smuggled oil and fuel from fishing vessels departing from Libyan coasts.
The vessels would remain adrift at least 12 nautical miles off the coast, outside Maltese territorial waters, as they discharged the fuel onto other vessels that carried it to the coast, the report said.
The UN report even gave a list of dates throughout 2015 during which the Maltese-hired vessels were tracked travelling towards Libya.
When faced with this information, Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said the Maltese authorities always investigated such reports. However, he refrained from commenting on the contents of the UN report.
