3min chapter

Macro Musings with David Beckworth cover image

Saleha Mohsin on *Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order*

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

CHAPTER

Financial Intelligence and the Immobilization of $30 Billion in Assets

Exploring the pivotal role of Stuart Levy as the first Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and how he elevated Treasury's influence through sanctions, including the immobilization of $30 billion in Gaddafi's assets by OFAC.

00:00
Speaker 2
Well, let's talk about another individual who also is at Treasury, but not a Secretary, but played an important role in that Stuart Levy. You have them in the book. Talk about him for a minute.
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, his last day was quite exciting. And that's where I start with Stuart Levy. So he, Stuart Levy was the very first Under Secretary for TFI, Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. And he played a pretty influential role in helping Treasury secure a seat at the National Security Table, which wasn't easy, right? The, you know, the State Department and DOD and Pentagon, it was a little bit of a head scratcher why the Economic Agency would want to be here, but then slowly by way of explaining how sanctions work and their people seeing their influence, Stuart sort of helped secure that table. And so it's a chapter called Nerd Warriors at Work, which are all the financial intelligence folks who are also warriors in war, in a different kind of war. And so I talk about how Stuart Levy on his last day, the Obama administration wanted to freeze or immobilize assets that belong to Gaddafi and the Libyan government that he oversaw. And they're looking around, you know, it's a nation of like six million people. They're looking for his money, right? Because he kind of thought his money is the government's money. The government's money is his money. And they're thinking, maybe we can immobilize a couple of million, maybe 10, 12 million dollars worth because we got to find it. You know, these gumshoes at OFAC, financial gumshoes are trying to find this money. And on the last day, Stuart Levy gets an email from OFAC, the director, someone, the head over there that says that we can actually find you $30 billion. And he thought, oh, there's a typo. It's 30 million. It must be 30 million. So he wrote back saying, did you beat him? Am I a bee there for 30 billion? And he heard? No, it's a bee, 30 billion dollars. And his jaw dropped. He couldn't believe that this agency that TFI started in 2004, OFAC had been an orphan until 2001, that these officials who worked there had been able to and again, their authorities and capabilities had become so sophisticated that they found 30 billion dollars that they could immobilize and sort of freeze as part of the effort to deal with Libya. And so that was a pretty big moment that he thought it's the largest sum at that time of assets that the US government had ever seized. And so it was a pretty big moment for TFI and kind of showed how far they had come since their creation, just a couple of years, you know, they were created in 2004. This was sometime in 2011, I believe. And so it's how far you've come, and then how much further we can actually
Speaker 2
go.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode