How Libya's Gaddafi-era transplant smeared Sierra Leone with a faulty ferry

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Sana Sbouai, Khadija Sharife and Mustapha Sesay

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A Libyan public investment fund has allocated $4 million to buy a new ferry to Sierra Leone, but a relative of Gaddafi, Abdusalam Abulghasem Abughila, appears to have siphoned off $1.4 million and used the rest to buy an old ferry in poor condition. A joint venture between Abughila and the Libyan government was supposed to buy the ferry, while the government would own it, but he allegedly had the money sent to his personal bank account and bought the boat through his Panamanian offshore company in place. In a separate settlement, Abughila is accused of failing to repay a $7 million loan from a public fund. Efforts to recover lost ferry funds have been hampered by the chaos surrounding Libya's civil war and factional disagreements over who controls Libyan state investments.

Lined with beaches and wooded mountains, Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, juts out from the West African coast like an island unto itself. The location offers idyllic views, but it also isolates the city from the interior of the country and its only international airport.

The ferry between the airport and the mainland is a vital part of the national infrastructure, serving thousands of Sierra Leoneans who cannot afford the price of more expensive water taxis. Yet for years the line generally operated on two aging and dilapidated craft that frequently broke down.

The story of how Sierra Leone became dependent on these rickety ships began more than 2,000 miles away - far from the lush hills of the country, in the oil-rich deserts of Libya, where the Former dictator Muammar Gaddafi once dreamed of building a grand pan-African alliance.

The ferries were supposed to help realize Gaddafi's vision of investing Libya's oil wealth in poorer African countries like war-torn Sierra Leone. Instead, the saga has become a symbol of the cronyism and nepotism that sank billions of Libyan public funds under Gaddafi and helped fuel the discontent behind the 2011 uprising that toppled him.

Muammar Gaddafi, the de facto ruler of Libya from 1969 to 2011. CREDIT: US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jesse B. Awalt, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Relying on confidential documents and bank statements, as well as court records in Belgium, OCCRP uncovered how Gaddafi's brother-in-law Abdusalam Abulghasem Abughila, a general-turned-businessman, was at the heart of what Libyan authorities say is a scheme to pocket much of the investment set aside to buy the ferry. Journalists also found a separate case in which Abughila's company was accused of failing to repay a $7 million loan from the Libyan authorities.

The MV Freetown ferry in late 2022. (CREDIT: OCCRP)

Foreign assets controlled by Libya's sovereign wealth fund have often been seen "as a means of personally enriching elites and a political bargaining chip", said Tim Eaton, a researcher at London-based think tank Chatham House.

"The reason why these assets are so sought after is that they allow money to be moved to places considered safer...