Shokri Ghanem, PM under Muammar Gaddafi, is thought to have drowned in the Danube after a heart attack in April

Former Libyan prime minister died of natural causes, Vienna prosecutors ruleShokri Ghanem, PM under Muammar Gaddafi, is thought to have drowned in the Danube after a heart attack in April
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guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 July 2012 05.18 EDT
Shokri Ghanem, who was living in exile in Vienna after the uprising that overthrew the Gaddafi regime. Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters
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Vienna prosecutors have ruled out foul play in the death of Libya‘s Gaddafi-era prime minister and oil chief Shokri Ghanem, concluding he drowned after a heart attack, Austrian media have reported.

The investigation will continue its efforts to get a full picture of the circumstances of the drowning of 69-year-old Ghanem in the river Danube in late April, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told the Austrian news agency APA.

The death shocked Ghanem’s friends and colleagues, who at the time said they suspected enemies may have hunted down and killed the man who knew more than anyone else about the Libyan dictator’s billions.

Ghanem’s body was found floating a few hundred metres from his home, fully clothed, near a promenade lined with bars and restaurants. Police said he had been in the water a few hours, since about dawn on 29 April.

There is no rail along the water’s edge in that area. It was not the first time a dead body had been found floating there.

“It was a coronary failure, then he drowned in the Danube,” the prosecutor’s office spokesman, Thomas Vecsey, told the daily newspaper Kurier. “Moreover, no substances were found in his blood that exceeded normal consumption of caffeine and alcohol.”

Algae found in the corpse showed that Ghanem had gasped twice for air before drowning, the Kurier report said.

Vecsey said the prosecutor’s office wanted to find out with whom Ghanem had been in contact in the days before his death and what had happened in the hours before he died, APA reported.

The spokesman was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters on Wednesday.

Ghanem was one of the most powerful men in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, in effect controlling the purse strings of the government and the Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi from power. The former Libyan leader was later caught and killed by rebels.

Ghanem moved to a comfortable exile in Vienna, where Opec – an organisation of 12 oil-producing nations – has its headquarters and where two of his daughters lived with their families. He was closely associated with Gaddafi’s rule by Libya’s new leaders and had ruled out returning home.