A recent report by “Kathimerini”, a renowned Greek newspaper founded in 1919, said that the Greek authorities found banknotes from those that were stolen from the Benghazi Branch of the Central Bank of Libya in 2017.
According to the report, the banknotes were discovered when a man tried to exchange 40,000 euros at a branch of the Bank of Greece in the city of Larissa. But the worn banknotes he presented aroused the suspicions of the employees, and they were confiscated and confirmed to be part of the Libyan stolen assets.
The report indicated that Khalifa Haftar’s forces seized the funds of the Central Bank in Benghazi in late 2017, and emptied its coffers, without knowing the fate of these funds, estimated at approximately 159 million euros.
The report continued that although some of the banknotes were damaged by the water, this did not prevent them from being smuggled to several countries, including Greece.
The European Central Bank’s Banknotes Directorate had previously warned national banks of the danger of trading these banknotes, and similar cases were dealt with in Belgium, France and Estonia.
Estonian reports previously indicated the involvement of Russian “criminal networks” in smuggling stolen banknotes from Libya.
