While NATO bombs were still falling on Tripoli in the summer of 2011, a different kind of predator was circling the Libyan capital from the safety of a Manhattan townhouse. Newly released 2026 US Department of Justice documents reveal that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and alleged Israeli intelligence asset, was also a geopolitical vulture looking to feast on the remains of the Libyan state.

Epstein’s private correspondence reveals a cold-blooded calculation to bypass international law and tap into the $32.4 billion in Libyan assets frozen in the US. The tragedy of the Libyan people was presented as a commercial opportunity.

On September 18, 2011, while the streets of Libya were still engulfed in the chaos, a clandestine plan was being hatched in New York to capture the country’s sovereign wealth. In an email titled ‘New York – Optics are important’, Jeffrey Epstein’s associate, Greg Brown, urgently pushed the financier to bankroll a high-level meeting with future Libyan leaders during the UN General Assembly. The targets were not minor players; they included Dr. Mohamed Magariaf, who would soon become Libya’s head of state, and his key advisers, Dr. Noah and Fadel Hshad.

Brown identified this trio as the men who would soon hold the mandate to negotiate with global giants like Goldman Sachs. The prize was a staggering $40 billion in Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) assets invested across Sub-Saharan Africa on top of the amounts frozen in the US banks. By offering to “identify, manage and monetize” these funds, Epstein’s circle sought to position themselves as the ultimate gatekeepers of Libya’s post-war economy – a ‘play’ that Brown promised would generate hundreds of millions for their own pockets.

The operation was in fact a privatized intelligence effort designed to exploit the vacuum of the Libyan state. Additional emails from the same period reveal that Epstein’s network was not working in isolation, claiming that former operatives from Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad were “willing to assist” in the hunt for Libya’s billions. This shadowy alliance viewed the $32.4 billion in funds frozen in the US – as well as the additional $40 billion’s African portfolio – not as protected sovereign wealth, but as a “significant opportunity” for recovery on a contingency-fee basis. By leveraging the “fearless” reputation Greg Brown attributed to Epstein, the group aimed to convince the nascent Libyan leadership that only their network of spies-turned-fixers had the “juice” to navigate the web of global finance and retrieve the nation’s “stolen” assets.

To justify this unprecedented financial intervention, Epstein’s network relied on a carefully constructed narrative that painted all Libyan overseas wealth as ‘stolen and misappropriated’ by the Gaddafi family – a claim that has never been proven 15 years later. This was a deliberate mischaracterization; in reality, these assets were the legitimate holdings of the Libyan State funds, invested in blue-chip stocks like Pearson and global banking giants. By framing a diversified state portfolio as ‘criminal proceeds’, Epstein’s people and their intelligence associates sought a legal loophole to bypass UN sanctions and extract a ‘contingency fee’ from wealth that belonged to the Libyan people – not a single family.

This strategy of criminalizing state assets was particularly aggressive across the African continent. During the 2011 chaos, persistent rumors (often fed by Western intelligence) portrayed the Libya Africa Investment Portfolio as Gaddafi’s personal slush fund rather than a legitimate development vehicle.

This narrative reached its peak with allegations involving former South African President Jacob Zuma. Claims surfaced that Zuma had received $30 million in cash (and even stashes of gold and diamonds) from the late Libyan leader for “safe keeping.” Although Zuma repeatedly and sarcastically denied these claims, noting that he would hardly be struggling with legal fees if he possessed this fortune, the ‘ghost story’ of the ‘Gaddafi Trillions’ served a vital purpose. It allowed shadow players like Epstein to treat the continent’s sovereign investments as ‘missing treasure’ up for grabs rather than state-owned assets that should have remained under the protection of international law.

The true danger of Epstein’s ‘New York Optics’ play was an attempt to formalize a shadow guardianship over Libya’s sovereign institutions before they could even be rebuilt. By targeting the individuals tasked with negotiating the Goldman Sachs settlement, Epstein was looking to establish a precedent when private, unaccountable fixers would manage the nation’s legal disputes.

This was a direct assault on Libya’s financial sovereignty, after the assault on its political sovereignty by the NATO military invasion. While the United Nations mission (UNSMIL) and international community spoke of ‘transitioning to democracy’, Epstein’s documents reveal a parallel reality: A race to ensure that the LIA remained a black box controlled by Manhattan-based intermediaries. This interference likely contributed to the years of litigation and internal divisions that have kept billions of dollars in state wealth effectively paralyzed – leaving the Libyan people to pay the price for a ‘recovery’ process that was designed by predators for predators.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of this intervention is that it was built on a financial phantom. For 15 years, the international community has been regaled with tales of ‘Gaddafi’s hidden trillions’ – a narrative Epstein’s network eagerly exploited to justify their ‘recovery’ services. Yet, the 2026 reality remains stark: Not a single personal bank account or secret stash belonging to the late Muammar Gaddafi has ever been found. The billions frozen in the West are, and always were, the documented institutional assets of the LIA. LIA was created in 2006 to, among other portfolios, invest oil money for poor families in the country.

Ironically, while the West portrayed the late Gaddafi as a man hoarding the nation’s wealth, the historical record shows a very different intent. As early as February 2009, Gaddafi publicly advocated for a radical plan to dismantle the state’s administrative corruption by distributing oil wealth directly to the Libyan people. He argued that wealth should be placed in the hands of the citizens to manage their own affairs – a proposal that faced stiff resistance from the very bureaucracy that later collapsed in 2011. By framing this advocate of wealth distribution as a common thief, Epstein’s associates created the necessary moral cover to target the state’s sovereign capital. They replaced a plan for national empowerment with a scheme for private plunder.

The predatory interest of figures such as Epstein was merely the tip of a much larger iceberg in a post-2011 landscape defined by systematic, state-sponsored pillage. While the international community remained publicly fixated on ‘frozen’ overseas assets, the domestic reality was a violent hemorrhaging of national wealth. According to reports from the Libyan Audit Bureau and various transparency watchdogs, it is estimated that between $100 billion and $200 billion has vanished into a black hole of corruption, institutional waste, and direct theft since the fall of the state in 2011.

This corruption is not merely an internal failure; it is fueled by the very lack of oversight that the West’s ‘liberation’ of Libya enabled – and that Epstein’s ‘private recovery’ schemes sought to exploit. A primary engine for this grand-scale theft is the Central Bank of Libya and its notorious Letters of Credit system. Experts argue that this mechanism has been weaponized to siphon off billions through fraudulent imports – where hard currency is secured at official rates for shipments of ‘goods’ that often never even arrive. The scale of this drain is staggering: In one single 13-week period in 2021, $2.5 billion in letters of credit were issued, with a massive portion of that wealth simply disappearing into the shadow economy.

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Via https://rt-english.com/africa/634484-libya-nato-invasion-and-epstein/

Taking shape behind closed doors since last September, first in Rome then across other capitals, the core mechanism of this US-brokered blueprint is a restructuring of the executive presidency: placing Saddam Haftar (Commander of Ground Forces in eastern Libya and deputy to his father) at the helm of a reformed Presidential Council, while keeping Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh as Prime Minister. Rather than fostering a democratic transition, the framework accepts state fragmentation as a permanent reality, securing the Dbeibeh administration in the west and the Haftar family network in the east as a dynastic duopoly.

To pave the way for such initiatives, Washington has leveraged preliminary milestones. In April, Boulos helped broker a record 190 billion dinar unified budget agreement – the first in Libya since 2014. At the same time, joint military maneuvers were executed in Sirte under AFRICOM’s Flintlock exercises, bringing together east and west forces alongside participation from Italy and over a dozen African nations.

Treating this unwritten transactional design as a national settlement fundamentally misreads the crisis.

Rather than establishing a legally grounded framework for general elections or dismantling entrenched militia networks, the arrangement codifies an elite duopoly. By relying on temporary financial distributions and supervised unified military drills to broker a top-down truce, Washington is mistaking a fragile pact between ruling families for actual state-building – guaranteeing that Libya’s hydrocarbon wealth continues to line the pockets of an entrenched cartel at the expense of its people.

Crucially, the Boulos initiative operates as an unwritten diplomatic push devoid of statutory grounding. By ignoring the foundational UN Security Council resolutions that grant legal mandate to external mediation, Washington’s ad-hoc gamble lacks the institutional backing required to bind local actors. Furthermore, the plan offers no long-term enforcement mechanisms. It relies on current US political backing and provides no protocol if the newly installed executives simply refuse to vacate power after the proposed two-to-three-year interim.

Without a universally accepted arbiter to compel compliance, the initiative risks becoming a dangerous power trap, leaving Libya vulnerable to renewed confrontation the moment external priorities shift.

This bilateral push also directly collides with the ongoing UN-led mediation process overseen by the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). While the UN’s incremental track has certainly been slow and struggled to deliver a breakthrough, it remains anchored in UNSC mandates and operates through recognized, albeit heavily discredited, domestic institutions – such as the House of Representatives and the High Council of State. By attempting to bypass these constitutional bodies in favor of an elite shortcut, Washington risks completely undermining the delicate institutional consensus UNSMIL has spent years attempting to build. Replacing a broad-based, rules-driven process with a fast-tracked bargain creates a parallel route that further fragments international diplomatic efforts and deepens institutional paralysis.

The fundamental flaw of the American initiative lies in its false equivalence between the political dynamics of eastern and western Libya. While the eastern region serves as a traditional stronghold for the Haftar family, western Libya presents a fragmented power balance. Prime Minister Dbeibeh exercises no absolute command over the west, operating instead through fragile networks and pacts with autonomous armed factions, including within his own home city of Misrata.

This domestic resistance exploded into the open on July 5, when Misrata’s military and civic coalitions issued a condemnation of Washington’s plan, rejecting any settlement that involves the Haftar family. When Boulos visited the commercial hub on July 7 to smooth over opposition, local elders and municipal leaders refused to endorse an unwritten deal. Dbeibeh seems to lack the authority to deliver western compliance, and a pact struck in foreign capitals cannot override the deep-seated opposition of the ground forces and local communities required to sustain it.

Beyond its immediate political flaws, the broader framework is viewed domestically as a mechanism designed to help the Haftar and Dbeibeh networks establish a permanent political dynasty, dividing the country’s state apparatus and economic assets strictly between themselves. Crucially, the plan contains no timelines for when, or if, national legislative and presidential elections ever take place.

This omission ignores the aspirations of the more than 2.8 million registered Libyan voters who picked up their electoral cards for the shelved 2021 polls, eager to restore popular legitimacy to their governance institutions. Instead of creating a bridge toward a democratic transition, Washington’s framework codifies the status quo, deferring the Libyan people’s right to choose their own leaders.

Another major obstacle confronting Boulos’s initiative is that Libya remains a deeply contested theater for regional heavyweights – notably Ankara, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, and Moscow – who are navigating the proposed deal with extreme caution while protecting their security, military, and economic footholds. Türkiye maintains a military presence across key bases in the west alongside extensive commercial interests, Egypt views eastern Libya as a non-negotiable border security perimeter, the UAE manages influential financial and energy networks, and Russia retains military and diplomatic leverage across both divides. While Washington seeks to build momentum through parallel diplomatic and economic pressure, these actors seem to have signaled (based on fragmented media reports) a reluctance to reshape their strategies. Instead, they are maintaining a wait-and-see stance, preferring to withhold definitive positions until an official plan is formally presented.

Even if Washington succeeds in cobbling together a consensus between Tripoli and Benghazi, the Boulos framework faces a structural barrier: the UN Security Council. Because the initiative deliberately bypassed the UN-facilitated inter-Libyan tracks, any final arrangement must eventually seek international legitimacy and statutory backing through a new UN resolution to replace existing mandates. In the Security Council, however, Russia holds a permanent veto. By ignoring Russian interests and attempting to unilaterally reorder Libya’s security architecture, Washington has designed a blueprint that can be easily decapitated at the UN table, leaving its Libyan signatories legally unsanctioned.

The core failure of the Boulos initiative is that it approaches Libya like a corporate asset undergoing restructuring rather than a sovereign state in desperate need of constitutional legitimacy. Instead of fulfilling the transition to democracy promised in 2011, when the US and its NATO allies intervened only to trigger a relentless free fall ever since, this diplomatic blueprint manages the ruins. It substitutes a genuine political horizon with an arrangement among the ruling elite. For the Libyan public, abandoned without peace or popular sovereignty, it is a pause that leaves the country vulnerable to renewed warfare the instant the bargain fractures.

Via https://rt-english.com/africa/644769-why-us-gamble-in-libya-fails/

The long-awaited agreement between Libya’s rival factions was finally signed on August 30 under the auspices of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). On that day, the mission gathered the two negotiating delegations at its Tripoli headquarters to formalize the text ironed out during earlier rounds of talks in Rome and Tunis. UNSMIL invited foreign diplomats, media representatives, and Libyan delegations to the event, where UN Special Representative Hanna Tetteh hailed the accord in her opening remarks as “another important milestone in Libya’s journey toward stability and national unity.”

This, however, bore a resemblance to previous diplomatic milestones – most notably the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) signed in Skhirat, Morocco. The LPA established the rules of the political game in the fractured country; rules to which none of the domestic political actors seem fully committed, yet from which none completely depart. In a sense, Skhirat remains the ultimate reference point for every subsequent UN roadmap in Libya.

In the vacuum left by the 2011 NATO intervention and the brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has seen a continuous parade of diplomatic accords. Yet the fundamental problem has never been a shortage of roadmaps, but rather their consolidation into nationally accepted political facts that elites cannot simply manipulate at will.

The August 30 agreement has two main parts. The first is restructuring the High National Elections Commission (HNEC), the agency in charge of organizing elections. In practice, this means replacing its leadership to settle disputes over appointments and regional representation. Although these changes were long delayed by regional quotas and political patronage stemming from the 2015 Skhirat agreement, rivals can still negotiate them with relative ease.

The 24-month timeline to hold elections was also established. However, the countdown is designed to govern the transition only once a single, unified executive authority and unified national institutions are established to oversee the voting process.

The second component concerns the central objective of UNSMIL’s latest roadmap: agreeing on viable election laws, an issue on which the UN has failed to make meaningful progress since the collapse of the planned 2021 elections.

Libya remains divided between rival power centers: the Government of National Unity (GNU), led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli, the western part of the country, and the Libyan National Army (LNA) command in the east led by General Khalifa Haftar. These exist alongside two political institutions: the Tripoli-based High Council of state (HCS) and the eastern-based House of Representatives (HoR). To break the deadlock, UNSMIL established a smaller negotiating group known as the ‘Smaller Convening’, or the ‘4+4’. It brings together eight representatives from the GNU, Haftar’s military command, the HCS, and the HoR.

This mechanism directly mirrors the ill-fated 2021 Geneva process, Libyan Political Dialogue Framework, which ultimately hardened Libya’s institutional divide and brought the country closer to a permanent de facto partition than at any point since its formal unification in 1951. The UN Security Council issued a delayed presidential statement endorsing the deal, and thus repeating a familiar ritual that seems to elevates elite compromise over structural reform. Seeking to seize the political initiative, Speaker Aguila Saleh brought the 4+4 framework to the HoR floor for an immediate vote where it was approved by the majority of members.

The ‘4+4’ format developed alongside (and ultimately eclipsed) UNSMIL’s broader Structured Dialogue. Even before those conclusions were finalized, UNSMIL was already facilitating a parallel ‘Smaller Convening’ behind closed doors – the 4+4 was born. As Hanna Tetteh told the Security Council on June 18, the explicit goal of this smaller format was to bypass the paralysis between the legislative bodies and force an accord on the roadmap’s first two steps: reconstituting the elections commission’s board and resolving the contested electoral framework. Thus, the ‘4+4’ was a deliberate strategy to concentrate decision-making among the political and military figures deemed capable of enforcing an outcome.

After the HoR approved the agreement on September 14, the HCS formally rejected it on October 5, along with the related laws and decisions issued by the House, arguing that they bypassed the constitutional, legal and consensual frameworks governing the political process. In her October 14 briefing to the UN Security Council, Tetteh acknowledged this rejection but maintained that the agreement offers an actionable path to presidential and legislative elections under a single, unified executive authority within 24 months.

She also announced that UNSMIL would meet members of the 4+4 committee later this month to examine the possibility of establishing a broadly representative national mechanism under Article 5 of the agreement in consultation with the Security Council. This proposal implicitly acknowledges that the 4+4 mini-dialogue alone may not be sufficient to advance the roadmap.

Another significant development is the removal of Aguila Saleh as speaker of the HoR after 12 years in office. On October 7, the eastern-based parliament elected Al-Salhin Abdulnabi as his successor, ending Saleh’s long tenure amid growing discontent over his leadership. The change is particularly significant because Saleh had been accused of being a prominent obstacle to previous attempts to move Libya’s political process forward. Tetteh acknowledged the transition, expressing her appreciation to Saleh for “his leadership and engagement over his 12-year tenure of service.” Her emphasis on the change in parliamentary leadership is noteworthy: The departure of a figure long associated with resistance to political roadmaps could create new room for maneuver, although it does not by itself guarantee that the House will cooperate with the UN initiative or that the entrenched political divisions will be overcome.

Ultimately, the structural core of the August 30 agreement rests on a fundamental contradiction: 4+4 does not equal 1. Combining four delegates from Tripoli’s political-institutional structures, including representatives of the HCS, with four delegates representing the eastern power structure in Benghazi does not produce a unified state. Instead, it seems to function as a shared enterprise in which rival political elites, rather than competing to build a single nation, recognize that their mutual survival depends on dividing power and maintaining exclusive control over the state apparatus.

Setting a 24-month timetable neither offers a guarantee that elections will actually occur; instead, it grants entrenched factions another two years of status quo protection without imposing any penalty for non-compliance.

Still, the UN Security Council appeared to endorse the latest UNSMIL plan. Following Tetteh’s briefing on October 14, the Council reaffirmed its support for the agreement, despite concerns over its implementation and the High Council of State’s rejection.

By prioritizing elite consensus over an enforceable constitutional baseline, the international community risks continuing to repeat a flawed equation. Until UNSMIL and foreign powers break this cycle and align their strategy with the Libyan public’s demand for genuine democratic renewal, every new agreement risks becoming another monument to the status quo. In the end, the ‘4+4’ framework offers no viable fallback or alternative path forward if it fails.

Last week, the UNSC did not vote to extend UNSMIL’s mandate, which expires on October 31. However, this is largely a technicality, since the Council has already approved UNSMIL’s roadmap.

Via https://rt-english.com/africa/647476-libya-rival-factions-agreement/