By Zweli Martin Dlamini

MBABANE: Libyan authorities are allegedly in possession of an electronic conversation between King Mswati and the late Muammar Gaddafi when the latter requested to hide some of his millions in the Kingdom of eSwatini.

On or around 07 April 2019, the Sunday Times, a South African newspaper published an investigative report alleging that about $30million Libyan state funds were hidden in eSwatini allegedly, by the late Muammar Gaddafi.

But these allegations were quickly disputed by King Mswati’s Government through the Central Bank.

“The Central Bank of eSwatini wishes to inform the Nation and the international community that it is not holding and has never held money from a former President of the Republic of South Africa as it has been alleged in recent media reports locally and abroad. By law, and indeed in practice, the bank only holds money for the eSwatini Government and locally licensed commercial banks.The Central Bank of eSwatini would like to apologise to His Majesty the King Mswati III, Her Majesty Indlovukazi, the entire Swazi Nation at large and anyone adversely affected by these false allegations,” read a statement released by Central Bank Governor Majozi Sithole.

But now,it has been disclosed that a senior Prince within the eSwatini royal family has been approached by the Libyan authorities to send a final demand of the money from King Mswati.

“It’s true that I have been approached by the Libyans to facilitate the return of their money from the King. But for now I am not comfortable with speaking about the matter until our next meeting with the Libyans. You will be the first one to know once this matter intensifies and once we are ready to go public with the team of the Libyans tasked with demanding the money from the King,” said the senior Prince whose name cannot be revealed for now as per his request.

An independent investigation by this Swaziland News, uncovered that the faction within the Libyan authorities that sent the Prince to issue the final demand to Mswati for the return of the money was in possession of an electronic recording where Gaddafi recorded the King when handing over the cash.

A questionnaire was sent to Thabile Mdluli, the Deputy Government Spokesperson where she was asked to respond on the latest developments, however, she had not responded at the time of compiling this report.

Reached for comments, human rights lawyer Thulani Rudolf Maseko, the Chairperson of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum said the alleged previous illicit dealings between Mswati and Gaddafi  did not only denied the people of Libya access to resources but it now compromises eSwatini State security.

“We need to understand that the matter involves illicit financial flows where powerful people moved money from one point to the other using bogus and unlawful means. So if it’s true that there’s some money that the King is holding which was sent to him by the late brother leader without following the proper channels of transferring money, that was an illicit transaction and it denied the people of Libya access to resources of their country,” he said.

The human rights lawyer consistently maintained that the mere fact that a leader of eSwatini was alleged to be involved in illicit dealings undermined the security of the country.

“In terms of State security, if a leader of a country is involved in unlawful dealings with other leaders, where does that put the security of that country? In the event there’s a dispute between the two people involved, what will happen? So in our view and knowing that Libya has been, for a long time a failed State, many elements are unhappy. Therefore, those people if they fail to recover the money from the King, that will compromise the security of the country,” said the Chairperson of the Multi-Stakeholders Forum.