...e in effetti il prezzo, seppur di poco, è in calo.
Qualcuno non proprio piccolo sta liquidando, nonostante le buone notizie sul secondo semestre di Bawag.
Sarebbe bello capire perchè...
Interessante la parte finale del articolo
Mustafa Zarti said he stepped down as deputy head of the Libyan Investment Authority after
Austria froze his assets today and asked the European Union to add him to a list of Libyan officials targeted by sanctions.
Zarti, 40, who has Austrian citizenship and was due to be questioned by Austrian police today, announced his resignation in an interview with Austrian public radio
ORF. He also told the broadcaster that he had “no idea” how much money
Libya held in Austrian accounts or assets. In a separate interview with the Austrian Press Agency, he called the Austrian asset freeze a “joke” and denied that he was in the country to withdraw funds.
Austria today froze all assets of Zarti via a central bank decree that said he is a “close ally of the Libyan regime.” It proposed widening the EU sanctions to make sure he can’t access funds in other countries, Alexander Schallenberg, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Vienna, said in a telephone interview. The EU-imposed asset freeze currently targets 26 people, including Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi, his closest family members and
state officials.
Zarti helped manage the $70 billion Investment Authority, which holds shares of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc,
UniCredit SpA (UCG),
Finmeccanica SpA (FNC) and
Pearson Plc (PSON), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Qaddafi and his entourage may have invested around 30 billion euros ($42 billion) in Austria, Vienna’s Die Presse newspaper reported on March 2, citing an unnamed former aide to the Libyan leader. Zarti told APA today that the fund’s Austrian investment was “very small.”
Police Questions
Austrian police yesterday questioned Zarti’s brother in Vienna and plan to question Zarti himself today, Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said in a telephone interview. He corrected Interior Minister Maria Fekter who had told ORF television yesterday that Zarti had been questioned already.
Police have started an investigation to find assets in Austria controlled by Qaddafi or his allies through trusts or front men or companies, Gollia said.
Zarti has an Austrian passport because he spent part of his teenage years in Vienna, where his father worked at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Schallenberg said. Zarti told APA he flew from Tripoli to Vienna on Feb. 21 to join his wife. He added that he hadn’t decided yet what his next steps would be.
As a friend of Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, Zarti may have funneled investments through Austrian trusts, according to a March 2 report in Die Presse. Saif is a “fantastic man,” Zarti told APA today.
Telephone calls to Zarti’s office at the
Libyan Investment Authority wasn’t answered during business hours in Tripoli today or yesterday. He isn’t listed in Austria’s public phone directory.
Libyan Deposits
Austrian banks have 1.2 billion euros in deposits from Libyan clients, the Austrian central bank said in a March 1 statement, adding that it could not yet say how much of the total assets were held by the people targeted by the freeze.
The Libyan-Austria relationship dates back to one of Qaddafi’s rare Western state visits in 1982, when he was invited by then Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky. Saif al-Islam studied in Vienna and appeared at social events including the Vienna Opera ball in 2006, together with the late nationalist politician Joerg Haider. Haider also was the Libyan leader’s guest on several occasions since 1999.
Austrian oil group
OMV AG (OMV) produced 10 percent of its oil in the North African country in 2010, while cement maker Asamer Holding AG and builder
Strabag SE (STR) and
Allgemeine Baugesellschaft Porr AG (POS) all have business in Libya.
Bawag PSK, the lender owned by Cerberus Capital Management LP, opened an
office in Tripoli in 2005, according to the Bawag website. The company has about 20 million euros in
project financing extended in the country, spokeswoman Sabine Hacker said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Boris Groendahl in Vienna at
[email protected]; Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at
[email protected]
