The entrance to the Telecom ministry. (Credit: L'Orient-Le Jour / File photo)
Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri has called a parliamentary session next Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 11 a.m. to discuss allegations of corruption in Lebanon's telecom sector, including lack of transparency, irregular awarding of lucrative contracts, and illegal hiring of officials.
Frequent though rarely addressed, the accusations took on a new twist when a court conducted an audit of the Ministry of Telecoms' accounts — published last April — from between 2010 and 2020. The audit revealed that the ministry, which has had six ministers in ten years, spent $17 billion — $6 billion of which was over budget — on Lebanon's mobile and fixed-line operators, namely Ogero, Alfa and Touch.
In an interview earlier this month with Hezbollah's al-Manar channel, MP Hassan Fadlallah said Parliament has begun to take action to decide on judicial requests to refer the former telecoms ministers to the High Court charged with judging former presidents and ministers.
Fadlallah stressed that the telecom file "reveals major irregularities, corruption and a waste of billions of dollars." In late August, an analysis of the audit conducted by SMEX, a digital rights organization based in Beirut, also threw light on these "squandered" expenses.
The former ministers facing charges are Nicolas Sahnaoui (Free Patriotic Movement, 2011-2014), Boutros Harb (Independent, 2014-2016), and Jamal Jarrah (Future Movement, 2016-2018), as confirmed to L'Orient-Le Jour by current caretaker Telecoms Minister Johnny Corm.
The latter did not mention, however, former Minister of Telecoms Mohammad Choucair (Free Patriotic Movement, 2019-2020), who was summoned in Oct. 2019 by the Financial Prosecutor General Ali Ibrahim.
This summons just preceded the protest movement of Oct. 17, 2019 that brought down Saad Hariri's cabinet. The revolution was triggered after Choucair's decision to apply a tax of $6 per month on calls via the cell phone application WhatsApp.
In late summer 2019, the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Telecoms MP Hussein Hajj Hassan (Hezbollah) called for the establishment of a parliamentary committee to investigate the purchase of the downtown headquarters of the company Touch for the sum of $ 75 million, accusing Mohammad Choucair of corruption.
Next Wednesday's parliamentary session should finally allow MPs to decide on the formation of such a committee, based on both the investigation of the financial prosecutor of 2019 and the audit of the Court of Auditors.
