Gaddafi put away more than $200 billion  in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed, according to Libyan officials. That's double the amount of previous estimates.
The size of the hidden cash, gold reserves and investments is "staggering", a person who has studied detailed records of the assets said Friday.
"No one truly appreciated the scope of it."
If true, Gaddafi will go down in history as one of the most rapacious as and bizarre leaders, on a scale with Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo or the Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
During his 42 years in power, Gaddafi steered aid and investments to benefit his own family and tribe, but denied support for much of the country, especially the eastern region that resisted his family's despotic grip on power.
US officials were stunned last spring when they found 37 billion in Libyan accounts and investments in the US and quickly froze the assets before Gaddafi or his aides could move them.
Governments in Europe seized control of another 30 billion and it's estimated that Gaddafi had stashed another 30 billion elsewhere in the world, for a total of about $US 100 billion.
Investigations determined that Gaddafi secretly sent tens of billions more abroad over the years and made sometimes lucrative investments in nearly every major country, including the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Most of the money was under the name of institutions such as the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan Foreign Bank, the Libyan National Oil Corp and the Libya Africa Investment Portfolio.
Investigators said Gaddafi and his family members could have had access to any of the money if they chose to.