The Libyan Attorney General's Office announced last Thursday probing allegations of corruption related to scholarships for Libyan students in Turkey, which sparked popular outrage after the names of the scholarships' beneficiaries, including many relatives of government officials, were published.
The Office's statement said that "the investigating authority is probing the violation of the principle of equality among citizens and of the priority right to obtain scholarships, saying it looked into the lists related to financial authorizations for over 14 million euros for 1895 Libyan students in Turkey."
Meanwhile, financial authorizations for the scholarships in question have been stopped, in preparation for conducting a criminal review aimed at clarifying the fairness of the administrative and financial procedures.
The lists of scholarships showed that many students were from government officials' relatives and they had received scholarships in ways believed to have financial and administrative violations, thus causing an outrage on social media, as calls grew for the identification of students whose full names and surnames were removed for the purpose of concealment.
On the lists, two brothers aged 57 and 70, accompanied by 10 members of their families at state expense, received the scholarships. Another case was a 74-year-old woman, who is said to be a relative of the leader of a powerful armed group in Tripoli.
After the Attorney General's probe was opened, the Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah formed an investigation committee tasked with reviewing the lists of beneficiaries and verifying the selection mechanisms of the Ministry of Higher Education, in addition to preparing within 10 days - since June 22 - a list of new students.
