Four years after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, chaos reigns in Libya as an internationally recognized government vies for power with a rival Islamic faction and radical groups including Islamic State control parts of the country's vast territory. Away from the civil war battlefields, an equally important struggle is taking place over control of the nation's $67 billion sovereign wealth fund. Hassan Bouhadi, former secretary of the board of trustees of the Libyan Investment Authority, claims control of the sovereign fund on behalf of the House of Representatives (HoR), the internationally recognized government. The HoR decamped to the eastern city of Tobruk in 2014 after Islamists rejected the results of the country's June 2014 elections and seized the Tripoli airport. Abdulmagid Breish, a former LIA chairman was forced out over his Gaddafi regime connections, has staked a competing claim on the funds with the support of the Islamist-led General National Congress (GNC), which controls much of the country's western half from Tripoli. The two men are facing off in the English High Court in a case that could determine who gets the money-and, with it, the upper hand in Libya's civil war.
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