Inside the rise of the Haftar family’s Dubai-based 'money man'

He is a Libyan businessman who lives in Dubai and carries a passport issued by the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

According to Italian media reports, he wears $500,000 watches, flies on private jets and stays at five-star hotels in central London.

He is said to own at least eight properties in the United Arab Emirates and a $3.7m apartment in Toronto, where he maintains permanent Canadian residency and donates to a prestigious private health foundation. 

He controls banks, a state-owned enterprise and private companies in Libya, the UAE, Malta and the UK.

But, according to the United Nations' Panel of Experts on Libya and a detailed report by US investigative organisation The Sentry, Ahmed Gadalla is a key moneyman for Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), which controls eastern Libya and is backed by the UAE and Egypt.

And now, as the US and its allies push to unify the UN-backed government based in Tripoli with the Haftar family’s Benghazi administration, the 46-year-old is in the spotlight.

Active on multiple fronts for at least seven years, Gadalla, who is from Benghazi, is said to have risen with the support of Khalifa's son, Saddam Haftar, and is alleged to be at the heart of a financial network that includes money laundering, arms smuggling and trafficking of various kinds. 

'Gadalla’s ascent, which has unfolded at the very nexus between Libya’s militia rule and hollowed-out economic institutions, shows how kleptocratic networks loot Libya’s public wealth'

The UN and Sentry reports have both shed light on what they describe as the use of banks Gadalla controls to obtain fraudulent letters of credit, his alleged involvement in fuel and weapons smuggling, and his connection to Haftar’s failed 2019-20 assault on Tripoli. 

Gadalla denies financing or supporting the LAAF and denies the allegations made in The Sentry and the UN Panel’s report. He says he is still engaging with the UN Panel. 

“I utterly reject and deny the accusations made against me by The Sentry. My lawyers are challenging those allegations, and I also refute the claims made about me in the UN Panel of Experts report insofar as they relate to me,” Gadalla told Middle East Eye. 

Fuel and military vehicles

Banks controlled by Gadalla have also been involved in the circulation of counterfeit Russian-printed dinars, according to The Sentry.

According to the UN’s report, a Gadalla-owned bank in Benghazi “actively blocked” attempts to “conduct an official investigation into the letter of credit”, although Gadalla rejects the UN’s conclusion. 

Gadalla’s companies have funnelled money into the Haftars’ war machine, The Sentry said, with payments likely being made to Russia’s Wagner Group, arms sent to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary in Sudan and Gadalla’s Dubai-based entities securing $300m for the failed invasion of Tripoli. 

Gadalla denies that he, or his company, are involved in any such loans, and that the bank records in question had been investigated by two third-party organisations, Deloitte and the Investigation Unit of the Office of the Attorney General of Libya. He also denied financing military activity or funding the Wagner Group.

The Haftars’ operations have suffered a number of high-profile failures, including an attempt in 2024 to import Chinese combat drones disguised as wind turbines, an unsuccessful scheme to procure Spanish drones the year before and, in 2025, the interception by Greek and Italian patrol boats enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya of a shipment of military vehicles intended for the RSF in Sudan. 

This last failure was connected by the UN report to a shipping company owned by Gadalla, who denies being involved in smuggling fuel or military vehicles.

“Although he now presents himself as a legitimate businessman, Gadalla’s portfolio of official activities conceals a broad range of questionable financial operations executed on behalf of the Haftars,” The Sentry reports. 

“Gadalla’s ascent, which has unfolded at the very nexus between Libya’s militia rule and hollowed-out economic institutions, shows how kleptocratic networks loot Libya’s public wealth on an immense scale.”

Gadalla, for his part, says that he conducts lawful, ordinary commercial activity within the constraints imposed by the post-conflict state.

A network of companies

Ahmed Gadalla became a Dubai resident in 2008. Prior to the uprisings that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, he studied engineering and earned a master’s degree in the US, according to The Sentry.

As Libya was gripped by civil war in 2011, Gadalla sold automotive and household cleaning products for an American company.

After Gaddafi’s fall, eastern Libya began to open up and Gadalla used his Emirati connections to get ahead and do business abroad, starting with a 2012 trip to the Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou.

Today, the Libyan businessman is open about leading the Alushibe Group - Gadalla is also known as Ahmed Alushibe - described by The Sentry as “a loose set of companies he controls in Dubai”. 

He is chairman of a Libyan state-owned steel company, owner of the Dubai-based UDS Shipping Services LLC, the Malta-based International Seaport Holdings and oil refiners in Libya.

The Aya 1, a UDS container ship named after Gadalla’s daughter, was intercepted in July 2025 by the Greek and Italian navies because it was suspected of arms smuggling. Itineraries for the Aya 1 and Aya 2, another container ship, show them moving from Libyan ports like Tobruk and Benghazi to the UAE.

Gadalla denies controlling the Aya 1 or any ship involved in arms smuggling.

The UN Panel of Experts found that the Aya 1 had “exported at least 22 containers with flexi-tanks filled with heavy fuel oil from Tobruk to the United Arab Emirates”, appearing to corroborate The Sentry’s assertion that the vessel was “used in illicit petroleum exports”.

Gadalla owns “several banks in Libya, including Wahda Bank and Bank of Commerce & Development”, the UN panel said. It found that he “used the banking sector, with the support of armed group actors, to fraudulently obtain letters of credit from the Central Bank of Libya”. 

However, Gadalla denies owning or controlling multiple Libyan banks or engaging in letter-of-credit fraud.

In 2023, Gadalla purchased Benghazi’s Libyan Cement Company, which was notorious because of its links to the Austrian fugitive Jan Marsalek, a suspected Russian spy accused of bringing about the collapse of Germany’s Wirecard.

Companies House listings in the UK also show that between 2019, when the former CIA asset Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli was launched, and 2021, Gadalla was co-owner of a Nisa off-licence in the British city of Birmingham.

Gadalla is now the director of the IT company Future Information Services, whose registered office is on Oxford Street in central London.

On the Companies House page linked to Future Information Services, Gadalla is listed as Kittitian rather than Libyan, and his country of residence is marked as the UAE.

UAE funding for Tripoli offensive

By October 2018, the UAE and the Haftar family had agreed to launch a full-scale invasion of Tripoli. Wagner Group, a private security contractor with links to the Kremlin, was willing, according to The Sentry, “to fulfil a combat function but demanded steady cash”.

Offshore channels were needed to move dollars to fund the operation, with the UAE and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia suspected of having supplied the bulk of the financing. 

'With their support, and his maritime transport capabilities, he facilitated the illicit export of this fuel from Libya'

Haftar’s network called on Gadalla, The Sentry said, “thus giving a prominent role to a younger financier who had operated in Dubai since 2008”.

With Farhat Bengdara, an economic adviser to the Haftar family, as chairman, Al Masraf bank extended $300m in loans to three obscure Dubai-based companies controlled by Gadalla in 2019: JTA General Trading LLC, Al Mored Oasis General Trading LLC and ANAA General Trading LLC.

When questioned by MEE, Gadalla’s representatives said that he had no business relationship with Bengdara.

According to senior Libyan Foreign Bank officials who spoke to The Sentry, the money, which left Gadalla’s companies “almost immediately”, funded Haftar’s operations and “most likely bankrolled Wagner mercenaries’ deployment in the context of the April 2019 offensive” - allegations which Gadalla denies.

The UAE has served as a hub in Wagner-linked revenue chains, and US government assessments and intelligence reports have at various times accused Abu Dhabi of financing, collaborating with or facilitating Wagner operations, particularly in Libya.

Thousands died in the Tripoli offensive, which was also supported by Egypt and France as well as the UAE and Russia, and hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes. 

Despite more than 1,000 Emirati air strikes across Tripoli and the involvement of Russian combatants, the invasion was not successful and the money spent on it remains, for the most part, lost.

“After Haftar’s offensive collapsed, the loans have remained largely unpaid, leaving the Libyan public to bear the financial burden while Gadalla has faced no accountability,” The Sentry said.

Smuggling fuel and arms

The UN Panel of Experts report describes Gadalla as a “Libyan national who rose rapidly within the banking sector over the past 10 years with the support of Saddam Haftar”. 

The panel reported that Gadalla “subsequently used the funds at his disposal to purchase shipments of diverted fuel from armed group actors operating in both western and eastern Libya".

“With their support, and his maritime transport capabilities, he facilitated the illicit export of this fuel from Libya, particularly through ports under the control of armed groups, and resold it for profit.”

The inspection revealed 12 militarised vehicles in some of the containers onboard. Based on photographic evidence provided by Operation Irni, “the Panel assessed these vehicles as military equipment”, the UN Panel of Experts said in its report.

“Operation IRINI contacted the carrier, which is ultimately controlled by Ahmed Alushibe,” it reported, referring to Gadalla.

Gadalla has also used the banks he controls to facilitate credit fraud and launder illicit profits, becoming part of the Haftars’ arms and fuel smuggling networks, which connect Libya to Chad, Sudan, Niger and Mali, among others, the Panel of Experts said.

It also reported that in one case, to which Gadalla is not believed to be linked, ammunition originally intended for the RSF in Sudan “was diverted and resold to individuals involved in gold trafficking in Niger” and linked to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Libyan reunification

The spotlight on Gadalla comes as the US pushes for Libyan unification.

On 11 April, Libya’s rival legislative bodies approved a unified budget for the first time in more than a decade. Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the US all welcomed this development. 

A week later, seeking to weaken Russian influence and enhance Washington’s standing in North Africa, US Africa Command’s (Africom) Flintlock training exercises began in the Libyan city of Sirte, with eastern and western Libyan troops training together for the first time.

“These exercises are not just military training. These are overcoming differences, building capacity, and supporting Libya’s sovereign right to determine its own future,” John Brennan, deputy commander of Africom, said last year.

The UK has been riding in the US slipstream. Britain’s ambassador to Libya, Martin Reynolds, recently visited Benghazi, where he met with Khaled Haftar, one of Khalifa’s sons, and enjoyed a lemon and mint drink at a rooftop bar.