Raja’s release approved, credit lines for wheat, capital control law protest: Everything you need to know to start your Wednesday

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Mount Lebanon Indictment Chamber Judge Pierre Francis approved Raja Salameh’s release yesterday, almost a month after Salameh was taken into custody. Francis also agreed to reduce his bail from LL500 billion to LL200 billion. Raja Salameh will continue to face questioning from Judge Nicolas Mansour, first investigating judge at the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal, who previously questioned Salameh for several hours on March 24. The detention of Raja Salameh, brother of central bank governor Riad Salameh, came following a complaint of illicit enrichment and money laundering brought by an activist group. Salameh is also suspected of involvement in shady real estate transactions in France. He has denied wrongdoing in connection with both cases.

Banque du Liban decided yesterday to open new lines of credit to subsidize wheat using money from International Monetary Fund-allocated Special Drawing Rights. Last August, Lebanon received an allocation of SDRs worth around $1 billion from the IMF. A BDL spokesperson could not specify what portion of the IMF money will be spent on the subsidy. Amid speculation about a possible removal of subsidies on wheat, Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan said “nobody” wants to remove the subsidies. Opening lines of credit will allow ships loaded with wheat to offload at the Port of Beirut and return Lebanon to normality gradually, Hajj Hassan told local radio station Voice of Lebanon.

An explosion rocked the town of Benafoul, east of Saida, around 1:30 am Tuesday. According to our correspondent in the South, the blast occurred at a Civil Defense center of an Amal movement scout troop. At least one person was killed and seven were wounded. The deceased has been identified as Ali Al Riz, the son of the town’s mayor. A Lebanese Army spokesperson told L’Orient Today that the cause of the blast is not yet known and is still under investigation.

The lira slid below LL25,000 to the US dollar on the parallel market yesterday, losing more than 5 percent of its value since the announcement of a staff-level agreement with the IMF last week. The last time the lira broke LL25,000 was on March 24, when banks were just ending their two-day “warning strike” aimed at pressuring the government to protect them from mounting legal pressure.

A joint committee session in Parliament to discuss the capital control law will take place at 11 a.m. today, alongside another follow-up session of the Finance and Budget committee dedicated to studying the 2022 budget. Ahead of the session, the Cry of the Depositors, an activist group, will gather outside the Al-Amin Mosque in Downtown Beirut at 10 a.m. to protest the draft, which they liken to a “death penalty.” The head of the depositors’ union and the Association of Depositors in Lebanon yesterday warned the political class against approving the latest iteration of the draft capital control law, describing the legislation as offering a “blank slate for the banks and Banque du Liban.” In the afternoon, a parliamentary subcommittee will study a draft law related to social security.

In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “#6 Charbel Nahas, portrait of a ‘hardliner’”