Shock troops of Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale do real damage to Qaddafi

Western bankers have done as much damage to the Libyan regime as NATO's bombs have, Frank Kane comments.

A couple walk next to a destroyed tank in Tripoli Street in Misrata. AP Photo

The phrase "asset depletion" has taken on a whole new meaning in tragic, war-torn Libya.

The American military uses the term to describe the systematic destruction of an opponent's fighting capability, usually by remote warfare weapons such as cruise missiles, drones or "smart" bombs.

In Libya, the damage has been done by Nato attacks using some of those techniques, as well as by more conventional assaults in support of the western-sponsored rebels.

A range of international economic sanctions has also been brought to bear to wear down the capability of the dictator Muammar Qaddafi to wage war on his own people.

But it turns out there has been a fifth column in the country all the time, working away secretly to destroy the regime's financial infrastructure. In a couple of years, it wasted billions of dollars worth of Col Qaddafi's assets. And the beauty of it was that the dictator trusted the asset-destroyers completely, even welcomed them as friends, and paid them large sums of money.

These shock-troops were not some battalion of US Navy Seals implanted in the country, nor a cadre of well-trained spies clandestinely working against the regime. They were the cream of the global international financial industry, investment banks such as Societe Generale, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.

Goldman Sachs, the financial equivalent of Britain's Special Air Service unit, took pride of place in the operation that could have had the code word Asset Storm.

It emerged last week, thanks to the campaign group Global Witness, that all these organisations were at the heart of a secret attack on the value of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), Col Qaddafi's sovereign wealth fund that used to have some US$70 billion (Dh257.11bn) worth of assets generated from its oil revenues.

It is doubtful the LIA has anything like that in the bank now. Asset hunters suspect the dictator and his family have stolen some of it and put it in countries with opaque banking regimes, such as Panama, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Switzerland.

Another chunk, mainly property, equity or other financial investments, has been frozen by international regulators such as the IMF or the European Central Bank, and is beyond the colonel's reach.

But a substantial amount, perhaps as much as $5bn, has been rendered valueless by the investment bankers. In other words, they lost it on the international financial markets in gambles on sophisticated financial products that went wrong. Plus ca change.

When the history of the clandestine financial war against the Libyan leader is written, the heroic actions of two banks in particular will be worth a mention in dispatches.

Societe Generale of France must get the medal for conspicuous financial ingenuity.

In early 2008, before the global financial crisis broke, the French had just fallen victim to rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, and the bank's share price was floundering. Societe Generale approached the LIA and persuaded the Libyans to buy $1bn of its shares in an attempt to support the share price.

It might have seemed a good idea at the time, but looked very silly indeed just a few months later when the financial collapse hit the world's banks, especially Societe Generale. The Libyans lost their pot.

But perhaps even more noteworthy, and fully deserving of the medal for outstanding financial audacity, way above and beyond the call of duty, were the actions of Goldman Sachs.

The "vampire squid" of the global investment banking scene took on some $1.3bn of LIA money, but by early 2008 managed to lose all but $25 million of it in complicated bets on currencies and other financial instruments.

In an effort to placate the dictator, Goldman offered to give him $5bn of their own shares in return for a $3.7bn investment, thereby making up the difference. Neat, but by now the LIA had wised up to Goldman's "sophisticated" ways and sent it packing.

Goldman negotiators had to virtually fight their way out of Tripoli in 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal. Conspicuous bravery indeed.

If the banks had intended it all, and were really acting in support of the nascent "Arab Spring", I suppose we should be thanking them for it.

But the truth is that, with the financial crisis about to unleash itself, they were desperate for cash from any quarter. Once they got it from the Libyans, they proved to be exemplary at losing it, double quick.

No wonder other regional sovereign wealth funds look especially sceptically at western financial institutions that come begging.