UAE freezes assets of 19 Libyans

Abu Dhabi"The UAE Central Bank has instructed banks to freeze the assets of 19 Libyan individuals and organisations in line with the two United Nations Security Council resolutions on Libya, a senior Central Bank official said here Monday. "We have implemented UN Security Council resolutions on Libya and are in the process of preparing a report. We are expecting within the next week or so to complete the report for onward submission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," Abdul Rahim Al Awadi, executive director in the Central Bank and head of its anti-money laundering and suspicious cases unit, told reporters. Al Awadi was speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Abu Dhabi on methods of detecting and combating money laundering. He said the banks have been instructed to search for and freeze any accounts or investments or deposits or safe deposit boxes in the names of individuals and entities that appeared in the two Security Council resolutions on Libya, one of which has 12 names and the other seven. The banks have also been told to stop any fund transfers related to the names mentioned in the two resolutions. Al Awadi said the National Anti-Money Laundering Committee of the UAE took note of Securtity Council resolution No. 1970 of 2011 and resolution No. 1973 of 2011 regarding Libya which are enforced by the UAE. The sanctions are meant to put pressure on Muammar Gaddafi to quit. The rebel forces have been trying to overthrow the the leader for the past few months. According Al Awadi, travellers leaving the UAE will have to declare large sums of money from September as part of a crackdown against money laundering. Beginning September 1, travellers will have to declare cash or any other financial instrument that exceeds Dh100,000, upon departing. The threshold of undeclared cash that visitors can bring into the country will rise from Dh40,000 at present to Dh100,000 in September. Abu Dhabi The UN Security Council passed two rounds of sanctions, resolution 1970 on February 26 and resolution 1973 on March 17. Resolution 1970 referred the Libyan government's violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators to the International Criminal Court, imposed an arms embargo on Libya and slapped a global travel ban on Muammar Gaddafi and members of his family and inner circle. It also ordered the assets of some of those individuals frozen. Resolution 1973 authorised enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians in other words, military intervention. It also expanded the number of individuals subject to the travel ban and asset freeze and blacklisted five companies, including the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and Libya's central bank. Those measures are legally binding for all 192 UN member states. From / Gulf News