The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), Libya’s embattled sovereign wealth fund, is suing US bank JP Morgan and Libyan businessman Walid Al-Giamhi in a London court.
Few details of the court case were revealed other than it is classified as a commercial fraud claim.
It is not the first time the LIA has taken legal action against an investment bank in the UK. Two previous cases were brought against Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale in 2016 and 2017 respectively over trades carried out during the reign of former leader Muammar Gaddafi. The LIA was unsuccessful in the former but was awarded $1.2 billion in its dispute with Societe Generale.
The LIA’s $67 billion of assets have been under UN sanctions since the 2011 revolution, despite appeals from the fund’s UN-appointed overseers that it is losing money on account of the ruling.
In March, the LIA had to reassure investors that its Belgium-held assets were safe after local media reported that $12.3 billion of LIA assets held at Euroclear Bank had gone missing.
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