Gaddafi smuggling cold coins, watches to UK for raising money to buy arms | Irish Sun

Gaddafi smuggling cold coins, watches to UK for raising money to buy arms

Irish Sun (ANI) Sunday 3rd July, 2011

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is reportedly smuggling gold coins stamped with his face and Audemars Piguet watches worth upto 100,000 pounds into Britain to use the cash from sales to buy arms for his war.

Accordinbg to the Daily Star, scores of coins and a number of gold and diamond-encrusted watches have been seized by Customs crimebusters, but hundreds more are believed to have slipped through.

"The gold and the watches were seized from a passenger flight. It was an attempt to smuggle them into the country without paying taxes, presumably to sell on for cash to fund his army of mercenaries," a UK Border Agency source has said.

"As VAT or duty has still not been paid, the goods are being detained until the Colonel coughs up. It's likely they'll then be exported back to Libya," he added.

The International Monetary Fund said that the Libyan central bank, which is under the dictator's control, holds 143.8tons of gold worth four billion pounds.

Although US and European governments have frozen billions of dollars in Libyan assets in a bid to cut off his funding, it is believed that the assets he has in the Libyan central bank is enough to finance his troops for years and put his country's reserves among the top 25 in the world. (ANI)