past & present of Ali Dbeba (Dabaiba) ODAC

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Libya – UK, my (ex) friend Ali Dabaiba ODAC (Organization for Development of Administrative Centers) chairman & Gadhafi  - May 2014 by Arnaldo Guidotti

Birth of ODAC and its ex chairman Ali Dabaiba coincided with its first giant contract for Sirte development plan in 1986 signed by myself as chairman of Enterprise – Viareggio Italy owned by Italmaco and inherited by Emaco group.

My friendship with Dabaiba lasted 13 years with so many meetings everywhere in Libya, Germany (he had frequent health treatments) and Italy.

I discovered that London real-estate agency Chesterton Humberts, one of whose offices is seen above, became part-owned in 2011 by the family of former Gadhafi insider Ali Dabaiba, according to a person close to the family. Libyan investigators are trying to recover assets of ex-Gadhafi associates.

The name of London real-estate agency Chesterton Humberts exudes English affluence. But in early 2011, as revolution engulfed Moammar Gadhafi's Libya, a stake in the London firm was quietly acquired by the family of a Gadhafi insider, according to a person close to the family.

The insider was Ali Dabaiba, who for decades ran a powerful Libyan government agency and was part of the inner circle known as "Companions of the Leader," said Libyans who know him. Amid the chaos of the Arab Spring, the deal shifted some of the Dabaiba family's wealth to the London property market, where purple Chesterton Humberts signs dot many neighborhoods.

A former senior member of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's inner circle took a stake in the high-end London real estate agency, Chesterton Humberts, around the time of the 2011 revolution.

Two and a half years after Gadhafi's overthrow and death, the new Libyan government is trying to claw back what it regards as ill-gotten gains of the former dictator and his associates. Among those it is investigating, on suspicion of embezzlement and abuse of office, is Mr. Dabaiba, said Libyan Attorney General Abdulqader Radwan in an interview in his Tripoli office.

"The State of Libya believes that the estate agency…Chesterton Humberts is part-owned by Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba or his brother or sons," said a document sent early this year to a U.K. law-enforcement agency by investigators working for the Libyan government. A similar document was sent to authorities in the British Virgin Islands.

The documents, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, state that a former Chesterton Humberts director told investigators he brokered the deal in which the Dabaiba family invested in Chesterton. The documents requested international help in uncovering Dabaiba family interests.

Mr. Dabaiba, who is 68 years old and lives in Libya, hasn't been charged with any crimes. Neither have other Dabaiba family members.

In the early months of the rebellion that doomed Gadhafi, the Dabaibas backed the rebels, and supporters said the family's embrace of the revolution compensates for any alleged past sins.

Libya is enmeshed in a familiar ritual for governments in the wake of fallen dictators: a quest to reclaim assets from what they suspect are kleptocrats.

Nearly 100 asset-recovery investigations and lawsuits are under way around the world, according to the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative database. These are complex hunts that lead investigators across borders, sometimes through mazes of shell companies and transactions in jurisdictions that don't require much disclosure, and many have ground on for a decade or longer. The 2011 Arab Spring revolts set off a fresh torrent from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Western companies that did business in Gadhafi's Libya are still grappling with the revolution's fallout. U.S. and British authorities are investigating investment banks, brokerage firms and money managers on suspicion of winning business in Libya through bribery, according to law-enforcement and financial-industry officials. The Libyan Investment Authority has filed civil suits against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for allegedly violating a fiduciary duty and France's Société Générale SA for alleged fraud stemming from transactions in the late 2000s. Both banks deny wrongdoing.

Ali Dabaiba, seen at left with his son Osama, ran ODAC a Libyan state contracting agency for 20 years but turned against Gadhafi during the revolution that overthrew and killed the ruler.

As Libyan investigators pursue holdings of people linked to the Gadhafi regime, one path has led them toward Chesterton Humberts, in a rare instance of such a mainstream firm turning up in a post-dictatorship asset search.

The firm's roots go back to 1805. Chesterton built a strong reputation serving London's high-end realty market. But it went through a bankruptcy reorganization in 2005 and was acquired for about £4 million, or about $7.6 million at the time, by Mercantile Group, the investment firm of a Libyan-born businessman named Salah Mussa, and by a partner.  In time, the Mussa and Dabaiba families crossed paths over Chesterton, according to Libyan investigators and the person close to the Dabaiba family.

By the late 1980s, Salah Mussa was investing in British businesses. In 2008, three years after buying half of Chesterton, he added another buckling U.K. real-estate firm to Mercantile's portfolio by purchasing Humberts for £3.2 million. Later that year Mercantile bought the other half of Chesterton. Mr. Mussa merged the businesses into Chesterton Humberts.

The firm burnished its posh image by sponsoring polo. "It's very Chesterton. It's got the right demographic for us," said Giles Milner, head of marketing. Mr. Mussa rode around London in a chauffeured black Rolls-Royce said people who know him.

Although the Mussas once feared Gadhafi's regime, by 2008—with international sanctions lifted because Gadhafi had renounced weapons of mass destruction—Mr. Mussa was rethinking his family's stance toward Libya, said friends and colleagues. He angled to win business there, they said.

To bolster his Libyan connections, he hired Sakher Koussa, son of Gadhafi-era spy chief Moussa Koussa, according to a former employee of Mr. Mussa's investment group. Sakher Koussa didn't respond to requests for comment.

Chesterton won a prized assignment in late 2008: arranging a purchase by the Libyan Investment Authority of a London building across from the Bank of England. Former colleagues of Mr. Mussa said he personally handled the £120 million deal. They said he also went to Libya to open Chesterton Humberts branches there.

At the time, the Dabaiba family was thriving in Libya. Ali Dabaiba, a geography teacher by training, had become mayor of the port city of Misrata soon after Gadhafi's seizure of power, and before long was part of Gadhafi's entourage, said people who know Mr. Dabaiba.

In 1989, Gadhafi launched a plan to transform his hometown, Sirte, into a modern administrative capital with an airport, conference center and university. He formed the ODAC, and put Mr. Dabaiba in charge.

"Ali Dabaiba was a very clever and capable administrator," said a Libyan engineer who oversaw the Sirte development plan. "It was clear he had the ear of the Great Leader."

Mr. Dabaiba owned a large property in Misrata that included a banquet hall neighbors could use free for events such as weddings. Neighbors said the facility, with Jacuzzi-equipped suites, raised his social status in the city.

The family also acquired businesses outside Libya. Corporate records indicate their businesses specialized in mobile billboards, fashion, frozen yogurt and archaeology, among other things.

ODAC's mandate grew to control most infrastructure development across Libya. Through the years, it awarded tens of billions of dollars in contracts. Libyan businessmen called it Jihaaz Dabaiba, "the Dabaiba apparatus."

Like many state-run institutions of the Gadhafi era, ODAC developed a reputation for occasionally questionable contracting decisions, said businessmen in Libya familiar with its arrangements. They said that in exchange for projects, contractors sometimes had to build houses for top government officials.

Libyan investigators said ODAC sometimes gave deals to companies with connections to the Dabaiba family. In one instance, ODAC awarded a contract to build a psychiatric clinic to a company called Evergreen Consulting Ltd., according to a copy of the multimillion-dollar contract reviewed by the Journal. Libyan investigators said Evergreen is linked to Mr. Dabaiba's brother Yusef.

Evergreen received at least six ODAC contracts from 2008 to 2010 with a total value of roughly $75 million, according to the investigators. After Gadhafi's fall, the Libyan Audit Bureau looked at ODAC operations in 2010 and the start of 2011 and said it found multiple questionable financial decisions. Mr. Dabaiba led ODAC for much of that time but left Libya in December 2010 for medical reasons, said a person familiar with the matter.

Among other questionable practices, the auditors wrote that they found indications ODAC sometimes awarded duplicate contracts for the same project. They criticized what they said was an ODAC practice of making cash loans to people both inside and outside the organization, totaling the dinar equivalent of $41 million.

"All the projects were overpriced," said Mohsen Derregia, who briefly ran Libya's sovereign-wealth fund after Gadhafi's demise. Ali Dabaiba "would come to someone, finance the business, take a share of the income, without being named or clearly associated with the business," Mr. Derregia said.

In early 2011, as Gadhafi's grip on power was starting to weaken, the Dabaiba and Mussa families' interests intersected. Mr. Mussa was sounding out affluent Middle East families about investing in and lending to Chesterton Humberts, said former directors of the firm. Around February 2011, when the anti-Gadhafi rebellion was heating up, Mr. Mussa reached a deal with London representatives of the Dabaiba family that gave the Dabaibas a stake in Chesterton Humberts' holding company, said the person close to the Dabaiba family.

Osama Dabaiba, a son of Ali, visited Chesterton Humberts offices several times and met with Mr. Mussa, according to a former employee of Mr. Mussa's investment group.  

In March 2011, amid the increasingly violent conflict in Libya, the international community sanctioned several Libyan institutions. The European Union imposed sanctions on ODAC, calling it an "entity acting on behalf of Gadhafi."

By then, the Dabaibas had pivoted against Gadhafi. With his forces besieging their hometown of Misrata, the Dabaibas donated millions of dollars to send supplies to the city, said former rebel leaders. Osama Dabaiba, now 41, embraced the Libyan uprising.

In London, Mr. Mussa, who is 53, founded a charity called World for Libya to send doctors and ambulances to the embattled country. The Dabaiba family bought two tables for the charity's inaugural ball in June 2011 at London's Four Seasons hotel, said a person who attended. Among items auctioned were two pairs of handmade Italian designer shoes donated by a Dabaiba-controlled company.

After rebel forces killed Gadhafi in October 2011, a priority of the new government was chasing the billions it believed had been misappropriated over four decades by people close to the dictator. In May 2012, Libya froze the assets of 240 former regime officials, state-run businesses and Gadhafi relatives, pending investigations. The list included Ali Dabaiba and a cousin.

Some have successfully sued or lobbied to remove their names. Ali Dabaiba is trying to do so but so far hasn't succeeded, said people familiar with the situation. The EU in 2013 lifted sanctions on the agency he once headed.

Libyan authorities have hired private investigators and lawyers to trace assets. In the case of the Dabaiba family, Libyan investigators said they believe it has interests in more than 100 companies registered in at least 10 countries.

Julian Malins, a London-based lawyer working for Libya, met last July with a man who identified himself as former Chesterton Humberts board member Tarek Al-Sayed, according to a document sent this year to British authorities. At the meeting, held at a Starbucks in a London department store, Mr. Al-Sayed said he had arranged a sale of Chesterton Humberts shares from Mr. Mussa to the Dabaiba family, according to the document and people familiar with the meeting.

Libyan Attorney General Radwan and investigators sent letters and documents earlier this year to authorities in England, Scotland and the British Virgin Islands seeking help tracing Dabaiba family assets. A letter Mr. Radwan sent to Scottish authorities in February asked for help recovering what it called "Libyan state assets stolen by Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba…and concealed abroad with the help of his family members and others."

A document the investigators seeking to track Dabaiba assets sent to the U.K.'s National Crime Agency in January described Salah Mussa as Ali Dabaiba's partner and "co-conspirator" in investing in the London real-estate firm.

Chesterton Humberts recently announced plans to split in two, reversing the five-year-old merger. The aim is to cater to different market segments, said marketing chief Mr. Milner, who said both halves would be owned by Chesterton Humberts' current shareholders.

Defenders of Ali Dabaiba credit him with supporting the anti-Gadhafi revolution and helping rebuild Libya afterward. They say the Libyan justice system, stretched thin as numerous former Gadhafi-era officials await trial for alleged war crimes and mass killings, shouldn't focus on administrative figures such as Mr. Dabaiba.

"Those still on the run, those who ruined political life here and killed fellow Libyans…[they] are different than Dabaiba and his like," said Ahmed Lenghi, a congressman who represents Benghazi. "As much as they might have taken from the country, they gave back to the revolution in some equal measure."