Sana Sbouai, Khalil Elhasse and Rahma Behi
In 2021, Abdelhakim Baayo made headlines for becoming the first person to register to run in Libyan presidential elections. By that time, multiple state bodies had accused him of mismanaging funds at a sovereign wealth fund subsidiary he ran in Spain. In 2021, Abdelhakim Baayo made headlines when Libyan media reported he was the first person to register for the country’s first-ever presidential elections.
At the time, Baayo was also a businessman, working as the head of a Spanish company owned by Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). The firm, Alhammra Company Spain S.L., had been set up in Spain in 2015, after sanctions imposed during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi caused administrative difficulties for a predecessor company in Gibraltar. The new company’s mandate was broad, and included activities as diverse as procuring cables and wires, and trading in milk and tuna.
By the time Baayo decided to make his presidential run, multiple Libyan official bodies had accused him of misappropriating Alhammra funds, including by using company money to make the down payment on an apartment registered in his own name, leaked documents obtained by OCCRP show. Though some of the allegations were made public in an audit report and on social media, the evidence behind them was not. OCCRP has now obtained internal documents — including invoices, emails, and payment notifications — that corroborate many of the key claims.
The files show that Alhammra made a down payment for an apartment in Madrid that Baayo owns. Company money was also used to pay medical or educational expenses that did not fit clearly within Alhammra’s mandate, according to internal company records seen by OCCRP. Baayo has never faced legal charges in Libya over the claims. Alhammra made similar allegations in a complaint against Baayo in Spain in 2020, but the complaint was withdrawn for reasons that remain unclear.
When reached for comment, Baayo told OCCRP in a response sent through a former colleague that the allegations were false. The alleged misuse of funds coincided with a period of chaos for Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, which was riven by political divisions and accusations of corruption, theft, and mismanagement after Gaddafi’s fall in 2011.
Tarek Megerisi, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that since Gaddafi’s fall, the amount of fraud at the fund’s subsidiaries had gone “through the roof.” “Previously, he [Gaddafi] used corruption politically. When he left, his system stayed but his role as the check was gone,” Megerisi said. The LIA’s assets have been valued at over $68 billion, held through a dizzying array of more than 550 subsidiaries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. The fund did not reply to requests for comment.
Allegations Against Baayo
Alhammra was set up in 2015 as a successor to a Gibraltar-based firm called Al Hammra Limited. By that time, freezing orders on Libyan assets had made it difficult for the Gibraltar company to carry out basic administrative tasks, according to company documents. The new Spain-based company inherited its successor’s contracts, specifically to supply materials such as cables and wires for the Libyan state-owned energy company. It also included contracts to supply food items such as tuna and cheese.
The allegations against Baayo started in late 2018, when Alhammra’s parent company and the LIA’s investment arm, the Libyan Foreign Investment Company (LAFICO), sent auditors to review Alhammra’s documents and financial statements for the previous three years. Subsequently, LAFICO wrote a letter to the attorney general accusing Baayo of committing “several acts that caused serious damage to the company, both materially and morally,” and acting in a way that “exposed the parent company’s funds to squandering.”
Six officials on a committee created by LAFICO recommended in a report that Baayo be referred to an investigation committee, but it is not clear if that ever happened. Baayo denied the allegations at the time, according to an internal report by LAFICO based on a meeting with him. LAFICO did not respond to requests for comment.
The Libyan Audit Bureau, the country’s state auditor, claimed in its 2020 annual report that Baayo had “deliberately concealed the documents revealing his transgressions and manipulations,” and accused him of hiding the company’s computers, deleting emails, and concealing cash withdrawals from a company bank account. Baayo told OCCRP these allegations were false.
In November 2020, Alhammra, by then under a new manager, brought a complaint against Baayo in Spain, but the case was later dropped after the complaint was withdrawn by the plaintiffs, a Madrid court told OCCRP. When contacted by reporters, Baayo answered that “four complaints” against him had been adjudicated by the Spanish judiciary and dismissed for lack of evidence.
Purchase of Madrid Apartment
In the same annual report, the Libyan Audit Bureau flagged further unexplained payments at Alhammra, including company money that had been used to make a down payment for an apartment in Madrid. The audit report specifically listed a transfer of about 164,000 euros of Alhammra’s funds. Records included in the leaked documents show that Alhammra sent that amount on October 10, 2018 to a Madrid-based real estate developer via Santander Bank.
The audit report said invoices from a little-known Tunisian company called Transatlantic International Trade, or TITCO, were used to create the impression that the payments were for a loan. A note from TITCO dated December 12, 2018 — obtained by OCCRP — confirmed that the company had received 164,000 euros from Alhammra for what it said were invoices from October and November that year.
A leaked email from January 2019 lends further credence to the audit report’s claim. In the message, the sender — identified as a member of Alhammra’s “financial department” — asked a recipient at a Spanish consultancy to “reconcile” three TITCO invoices with the Santander Bank payment from October. TITCO was a Tunis-based company set up in December 2013 by two Libyan citizens, Esam Abouzriba and El Makki Meelad Mohamed Ibrahim. The company was shut down in 2017, the year before the invoices were issued. The company’s annual financial reports, which are required by law, do not appear in the Tunisian registry.
“M. Baayo” is still listed as owner of the apartment in question, as well as two nearby parking spaces, Spanish public records show. The apartment, located in Madrid, is now estimated to be worth over 750,000 euros. In his response to OCCRP, Baayo said the company took out a legal loan and that several Libyan authorities confirmed the validity of the procedure. He described the allegation that TITCO’s invoices had been used to disguise the apartment purchase as “false and misleading,” and said the complaint had been dismissed. Abouzriba, Ibrahim, and the Libyan Audit Bureau did not reply to requests for comment.
Alhammra’s Other Suspicious Expenditures
Between 2016 and 2017, Alhammra also spent over 145,000 euros on travel, medical services, and education-related expenses, according to internal company records seen by OCCRP. Baayo told OCCRP that internal regulations for LAFICO employees authorized the company to cover their children’s tuition fees. He did not respond specifically to questions about the travel and medical expenses. These included 9,745 euros used to pay medical expenses for an employee’s mother, according to the LAFICO report. The report also noted multiple payments of “tuition fees” for the children of another employee.
Alhammra also made several rent payments between November 2017 and March 2018 on behalf of Ahmed Maiteeq, who was Libya’s deputy prime minister at the time, and a woman who social media posts suggest is his wife. The payments, also for an apartment in Madrid, amounted to 8,000 euros, invoices from the real estate company and Alhammra bank records show. It is not clear why Alhammra made these payments, which were not mentioned in the official Libyan reports.
Baayo described OCCRP’s characterization of these transactions as factually misleading and said that he had been acquitted of this claim, without providing further explanation. Maiteeq did not respond to questions. In another transaction — which also did not appear in any of the Libyan official reports — Alhammra paid over 250,000 euros in 2016 to buy a factory whose bank account address is the same Tunis address used by TITCO.
According to payment transfer records obtained by OCCRP, the money was paid into a Tunisian bank account with two beneficiaries including Al Makki, one of TITCO’s founders. When reporters visited the site in 2023, there was no trace of the factory. Nor was there any sign of the factory in Tunisia’s company register. Baayo said that the factory project was ultimately canceled and the money was re-directed in order to purchase a truck. He did not provide any evidence.
Alhammra went into liquidation in Spain in 2022, though it wasn’t until the following year that Baayo announced in a Facebook post that he had resigned from his position. By then, Baayo had made his presidential ambitions known. But he never got a chance to test them out: Libya’s elections were delayed repeatedly, and still have yet to be held.
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