Madar (Tripoli) - Fawzi Abu Khazam, a member of the board of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL), took over the duties of governor on Thursday, October 22, 2026, from a handover committee formed under decision No. 6 of 2026 of the presidency of the House of Representatives (HoR), the Libyan News Agency (LANA) reported, citing media websites and online pages.
The committee is chaired by a member of the High Council of State and includes an HoR member, a CBL board member, another High Council of State member and a CBL employee, the agency said.
The HoR presidency had accepted Governor Naji Issa's resignation in principle and tasked Abu Khazam with running the bank on an interim basis until the resignation is put to the House at its next session for a final decision, according to LANA.
The CBL, for its part, condemned on Thursday what it described as the entry of "a force and other parties" into its Tripoli headquarters and the violation of the governor's office in his absence. It held all those involved fully responsible for the consequences, "first and foremost the Ministry of Defence", which is responsible for protecting the building, disclaimed responsibility for any measures resulting from the entry and said it reserved the right to take legal action.
According to the Libya Herald, Issa told local media he had not resigned and had retracted his earlier resignation, while the High Council of State's first deputy chairman, Naji Mukhtar, rejected what he called the "unilateral action" of the HoR presidency. Issa submitted his resignation to both chambers in August 2026, which at the time asked him to stay on.
The move came a day after the storming of the Audit Bureau's headquarters in Tripoli on Wednesday, which the European Union delegation and the missions of EU member states condemned on Thursday, urging that disputes over appointments to sovereign institutions be settled solely through legal and institutional procedures. The Government of National Unity had not commented on the central bank events when the newspaper published its report.
