A South African woman who has been slapped with US sanctions for trying to move money out of Uganda for Libyan fugitive Saadi Gaddafi, claims the South African government offered to make her troubles “go away” if she “kept quiet”.
In a personal meeting with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala, Dalene Sanders also requested asylum for 39-year-old Gaddafi, who was smuggled into Niger at the height of the Libyan revolution in 2011, and from where he has been shielded from repeated extradition requests ever since.
“African leaders believe it is best to get him started with a new life where they can keep an eye on him,” she said in reference to the outspoken Gaddafi, who broke his house arrest conditions earlier this year when he spoke out on television against the new Libyan government.
Gaddafi, one of late Libyan dictator Muammar’s eight children, is regarded as the black sheep of his family. He tried his hand at professional soccer while in his 20s and bought a share in Italian soccer team Juventus in a bid to secure a place on the team.
A US cable leaked in 2009 talked of his hedonistic lifestyle, bisexual orientation and playboy ways.
During the 2011 uprising he was the commander of Libya’s special forces and led various battles. He and two of his siblings are wanted by Interpol.
Sanders, who was added to the US sanctions list last October, told the Sunday Tribune she has been a friend and business associate of Gaddafi since 2008, when he stayed at the lodge where she worked in Arusha, Tanzania.
She is an interior designer and he asked her to develop lodges in Libya. She claims she visited his country as his guest on several occasions.
She said she would also “book his hunting trips and photography safaris in South Africa (in the Eastern Cape), Zimbabwe and Botswana”.
He would wire her money from Libya, which she would then transfer from her account to the respective lodges where he was destined to travel.
“The trust started from there. But I didn’t transfer any money (on his behalf) since the revolution began” in Libya early in 2011.
Yet she fails to explain why the US Treasury took the move it did, which it publicised worldwide in a statement six months ago.
In e-mail correspondence with Washington, the US government has confirmed to the Sunday Tribune that the sanctions remain in place.
Historically, Uganda’s ties with Libya have been solid, dating back to the Idi Amin era. The country is considered the hub of Libya’s investments on the continent, with $375 million invested in various sectors, including oil.
What or how much Sanders was targeting is not known.
The 42-year-old mother of two claims she approached the South African embassy in Dar es Salaam when she became aware of the sanctions.
She says she was assured then and on a subsequent visit to the embassy earlier this year that “they were sympathetic towards me and my case”.
“You are obviously going through a big learning curve at the moment and you are just a small pawn who is being used,” she alleges an embassy official told her in a meeting attended by other embassy staff.
“I suggest you keep quiet and wait. We can deal with this,” she says she was told.
The South African embassy, speaking through Department of International Affairs and Co-operation spokesman Clayson Monyela, confirmed that Sanders visited the mission, but flatly denied offering her assistance, saying her allegations are “absolutely not true”, as such a commitment “would be legally impossible to meet by any official”.
As a result of the sanctions, Sanders’s bank accounts in Tanzania, where she has lived for a number of years, have been frozen, as have her accounts in South Africa that she has held with FNB since 1994.
Nainesh Desai of FNB’s risk team told the Sunday Tribune that “the Banking Association of South Africa issued a note on November 1 last year to banks detailing sanction to Dalene Sanders.”
To comply with this, FNB shut her two bank accounts and cancelled her credit card. Failure to do so could have resulted in the bank losing its licence, said Desai.
Sanders also claims that, like the South African authorities, the Tanzanian government has assured her the matter will disappear over time, and with silence.
She insists Dar es Salaam invited the Gaddafis to invest in the country.
“They asked his family to invest in tourism and agriculture in Tanzania,” she says.
“And I helped him set up companies there, but it was at the request of the Tanzanian government.
“Now they say I need to keep quiet. They say they are dealing with it.”
When news of the sanctions broke, Gaddafi called her and “said he was sorry”.
She claims he has since communicated with her from Niger and in the past few weeks she received an SMS “asking if I was safe”.
However, she refused to disclose the number from which it was sent, claiming “it doesn’t work. He changes his number every week and it’s not working now”. - Sunday Tribune