Raja Salameh arrested, fuel syndicate announces strike, fire kills Syrian child: Everything you need to know to start your Friday

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Raja Salameh is in state custody after he was arrested yesterday on a warrant issued by Judge Ghada Aoun. The younger brother of much-maligned central bank Governor Riad Salameh owns Forry Associates Ltd., which received payments of more than $330 million in brokerage fees from Banque du Liban between 2002 and 2014, a probe by Swiss authorities revealed recently. Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Aoun seems on a mission to hold the Lebanese banking industry accountable this week, as she froze all assets of Creditbank, including properties and vehicles, and issued a travel ban on its chairman, Tarek Khalife, yesterday. The prosecutor told Reuters this measure is part of an ongoing investigation. She froze the assets of five other banks earlier this week and issued travel bans on their bosses the week before. She has not charged any of them with a crime. On Wednesday, after Lebanon’s Fransabank closed all of its branches in the country after a judicial order froze its assets based on a legal dispute with a man seeking to unlock his funds in the bank, the Association of Banks in Lebanon criticized what it described as “arbitrary and illegal measures'' being taken against lenders, saying these threatened to “topple the banking sector.” The association will meet today to discuss how the sector will face this growing pressure, with some of its members reportedly calling for a strike order to push the government into intervening on their behalf. Lebanese banks have illegally denied most citizens access to their hard currency deposits since the country started financially spiraling in 2019.

The syndicate of fuel distributors, transporters and tanker truck owners called for a strike next Tuesday. The strike, which the syndicate said would affect “the entirety of Lebanese territory,” was announced after a meeting held at the General Confederation of Lebanese Workers’ headquarters, with the participation of land transport unions head Bassam Tleis. General Confederation of Lebanese Workers head Bechara al-Asmar told L’Orient Today that the Energy Ministry’s oil department has been urging truck owners to homogenize tanks’ capacity since 2019 in an effort to combat fraud. However, truckers say this would saddle them with additional costs. Asmar confirmed that talks are underway between both entities to find a solution. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to commodity price hikes in Lebanon, as it has internationally. However, fuel prices, as set by the Energy Ministry, have registered two dips in the past 24 hours. Yesterday, the price of 20 liters of 95-octane and 98-octane gasoline decreased by LL31,000, reaching LL420,000 and LL430,000, respectively. Meanwhile, 20 liters of diesel now cost LL423,000 after a drop of LL56,000, while a cylinder of household gas now costs LL292,000, down LL18,000. The weekend before last, long lines formed at gas stations attributed to drivers’ fear of price increases, similar to last summer. Several gas stations refused to sell fuel while awaiting price adjustments.

The IMF will pay a visit to Lebanon “before the end of March,” the body's spokesman announced yesterday. While International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice claimed that discussions are progressing well, he stressed that “important work” still needs to be done. However, he did not clarify what manner of progress had been made or to what extent. Although Lebanese officials have agreed to assess the financial sector's losses at $69 billion as a basis for negotiations with the IMF, head of the parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee and Free Patriotic Movement MP Ibrahim Kanaan said on Wednesday that the 2022 draft budget, a key demand of the IMF to unlock its funds to the ailing country, would not be adopted in its current form “before or after the elections.” On Feb. 11, the IMF had published its roadmap for Lebanon, which defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2020 for the first time in its history. A first round of discussions with the IMF launched in May 2020 but was suspended in July due to the lack of consensus from the Lebanese side on the distribution of the losses of the banks and Lebanon’s central bank. Further talks did not resume until September 2021, when Najib Mikati’s government was formed. Little progress has been made since then.

A child was killed and a young man suffered severe burns after a fire tore through a Syrian refugee camp Wednesday night. Civil Defense was dispatched to the scene in Marj, West Bekaa, to extinguish the flames. The cause of the fire remains unclear. Similar causes of death regularly occur in Syrian refugee camps across Lebanon where living conditions are already harsh and dangerous, especially during the winter months, due to a lack of proper housing and the makeshift ways its inhabitants are forced to keep themselves warm.

In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “Tony Saliba resumes his post like nothing happened.”