A Tripoli criminal court has sentenced Amal Jerari, the former head of Libya’s diplomatic mission to Belgium and Luxembourg, to seven years in prison for embezzlement.
The high-profile case has captivated public attention over the past several months.
In addition to the prison sentence, the court ordered Jerari to pay a fine twice the amount of the embezzled funds and stripped her of her civil rights for the duration of her sentence.
This was stated in a Thursday announcement from the Libyan Attorney General’s office.
The court found that Jerari had intentionally engaged in illicit gain and unlawfully appropriated public funds, causing significant harm to the public interest.
The case first came to public attention in July 2023 when Libyan social media circulated two audio recordings of Jerari requesting the transfer of $200,000 from funds allocated for the treatment of Libyan patients to her personal account.
Nadima Al-Quraytli, Jerari’s secretary in Belgium, confirmed the authenticity of the recordings in Libyan media, noting that the conversations were documented in a lawyer’s office.
In the first recording, Jerari allegedly asked Al-Quraytli, based on a suggestion from an unidentified individual named Abdelsalam, to prepare a fictitious invoice for a non-existent cancer patient with expensive treatment costs.
This invoice was then to be sent to the Ministry of Health for approval, allowing funds from the health deposit account at the Libyan embassy in Belgium to be diverted without legal repercussions.
The second recording involved Jerari discussing the fake invoice after the matter had turned into a public scandal, seeking Al-Quraytli’s assistance in resolving the issue.
Following these revelations, the Administrative Control Authority suspended Jerari from her position in Belgium in August 2023 due to multiple violations.
The situation escalated in October 2023 when the Belgian Attorney General’s office launched an investigation into suspicious financial transfers involving Jerari. Reports from Belgian newspapers “Le Soir” and “7 sur 7” indicated that Jerari had faced an administrative hearing in Tripoli regarding allegations of corruption.
She was accused of funnelling hundreds of thousands of euros to a company owned by her son. Both Jerari and her son denied any wrongdoing, asserting that the funds were allocated through legitimate contracts.
Belgian media revealed that €231,000 had been transferred from the Libyan embassy’s account to a Belgian company in Liedekerke, intended for the purchase of MRI machines from a German company owned by Jerari’s son. However, the funds never reached their intended destination, raising suspicions of embezzlement.
The Belgian Attorney General’s office froze the company’s accounts but only recovered €118,000. Additional transfers totalling €319,000 were made directly to the German company for medical equipment.
In October, the Libyan Attorney General ordered Jerari’s pretrial detention on corruption charges following her dismissal from her diplomatic post.
This case continues to unfold, highlighting issues of corruption and accountability within Libya’s diplomatic corps.
