The New York Times, citing US and foreign intelligence officials, said Qadhafi's cash -- in US dollars, Libyan dinars and possibly other foreign currencies -- is stored at the Libyan Central Bank and other banks around Tripoli.

Qadhafi "likely has tens of billions in cash that he can access inside Libya," an unnamed US intelligence official said.

The cash hoard is vast enough for Qadhafi to comfortably pay his troops, African mercenaries and his political supporters.

Some of the cash may have been moved into Qadhafi's Tripoli compound Bab Al Azizia, an unnamed person with ties to the Libyan government told the newspaper.

The same source told The New York Times that the Qadhafi regime had hired between 3,000 to 4,000 mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa and was paying them $1,000 a day each. US officials however could not confirm the numbers of mercenaries or the amount they were paid.

The African mercenaries were coming from Mali, Niger and Sudan -- especially from the Justice and Equality Movement rebel group operating in Darfur, the source told the newspaper.

Qadhafi has likely been building up reserves since 2004, when international sanctions against his regime began to be lifted -- and apparently feared that sanctions could be re-imposed in the future. "He learned to keep cash around," the source said.

Qadhafi appears to have moved billions of dollars in assets to Libya in the days before protests erupted, Kenneth Barden, a lawyer who specializes in Middle East financing, told The Times.

Qadhafi has "surreptitious accounts and unaccounted sums that are significant enough to give him security even if the world caves in on him," David Aufhauser, a top Treasury Department official under former president George W. Bush, told the newspaper.

The United States has frozen at least $30 billion of Libya's assets, US officials announced in late February, while the United Nations and the European Union have also imposed sanctions and frozen assets.