The mysterious drowning of Muammar Gadafy's former oil boss in Vienna has shaken friends and colleagues, who say they suspect enemies may have hunted down and killed the man who knew more than anyone else about the Libyan dictator's billions.
The body of Shokri Ghanem, who served for a time as Gadafy's prime minister and ran the Libyan oil industry for years, was found floating in the Danube River on Sunday morning a few hundred metres from his home, fully clothed.
According to police he drowned, possibly having fallen into the river after a heart attack while on an early morning walk.
Preliminary autopsy reports show no sign of foul play. Friends say he did not know how to swim, and they had warned him to be careful of enemies in his Austrian exile. Mr Ghanem (69) was one of the most powerful men in Gadafy's Libya - effectively controlling the purse strings of the government and the Gadafy family - until he defected to the opposition in May last year as rebels bore down on Tripoli.
His decision to switch sides was a turning point in the uprising that eventually drove Gadafy from power. The former Libyan leader was eventually caught by rebels and lynched. Mr Ghanem moved to a comfortable exile in Vienna, headquarters of OPEC, where two daughters live with their families.
He was still closely associated with Gadafy's rule by Libya's new leaders and had ruled out returning home.He would have had enemies among Gadafy's opponents because of his years at the centre of power, as well as among the late leader's friends and kin because of his decision to defect.
And he would have had unrivalled knowledge of years of oil deals worth tens of billions of dollars.
Friends doubted the official account of his death."I thought that was ridiculous. You don't go down to the Danube, have a heart attack and fall into the river," said a former oil minister of another OPEC country who had remained a close friend of Mr Ghanem.
His body was found at 8:40am, floating near a promenade on the Danube, an area lined with bars and restaurants, where Viennese gather in the summer to sunbathe and drink beer. Police say he had been in the water a few hours, since about dawn.
Reuters