Tripoli has $10 billion worth of gold reserves, which runaway Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could use to cause problems for the rebels, a former Central Bank governor said.
Rebels in Libya seized control of the capital, Tripoli, on Wednesday. Gaddafi's whereabouts are currently unknown.
"Tripoli has gold reserves estimated at $10 billion, and now that Gaddafi is on the run, he could take some of those with him," Farhat Bengdara, the former governor of the Libyan Central Bank, told the Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper on Thursday.
He said Colonel Gaddafi "desperately tried to sell" the gold to begin with and now he "is most likely trying to pay or bribe some tribes or volunteers to be his security guards and to cause further chaos."
Bengdara also suggested that Gaddafi could have gone to the city of Sebha in southwestern Libya or to the border with Algeria in the west.
The former governor of the Libyan Central Bank also said that "Libya does not need donors because it is a rich country," and its reserves amount to $168 billion, but at the moment they are all frozen.
