Tripoli, Libya

AFTER four decades of tyrannical rule by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, financed largely by our country’s oil wealth, Libyans have taken steps this summer toward a true democracy. Last month, we got to vote in legislative elections, and this month we experienced the first peaceful transfer of power, from the Transitional National Council to a new national assembly, in our country’s modern history.

While we are grateful to the Western countries that helped us topple Colonel Qaddafi last year, something perverse is happening in those countries now. Oil industry lobbyists are using their influence in Washington and Brussels to try to undermine transparency measures that could help prevent future tyrants from emerging. That must not be allowed to happen.

When Colonel Qaddafi was in power, I worked for Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation, in a position that allowed me to observe corruption firsthand. I helped produce audits that detailed the mismanagement of millions of dollars of oil revenues, including the systematic underpricing of oil and the discounting of prices for select foreign companies. I initiated investigations into why millions of barrels of crude oil went missing from an oil field in 2008; presumably, the proceeds had gone into the pockets of the elite.

The regime never explained why it requested the audits, which were never released to the public. Feeling that I had to do something, I naïvely wrote 50 letters denouncing corruption, including three to Colonel Qaddafi’s powerful son Seif al-Islam. The result? I was demoted and suspended without pay. Intelligence agents interrogated me. I received death threats: after an unmarked car slammed into my car, intelligence agents visited me and told me, “Next time could be fatal.”