Governor of the Banque du Liban Riad Salame at the BDL's gold bullion reserve in Beirut on Nove. 24, 2022. (Credit: Lebanon central bank/Handout via Reuters)
"You have to ask Riad Salameh."
When questioned by the French national prosecutor's office, Anna Kosakova, the former romantic partner of Banque du Liban governor Riad Salameh, is said to have tirelessly referred the investigators to Salameh, according to the French newspaper Médiapart, which published information from judicial case documents on Thursday.
Kosakova, with whom the governor had a child in 2005 that he recognized two years later, was allegedly indicted by French Judge Aude Buresi on June 14, 2022 for "criminal conspiracy," "laundering in organized gang" and "laundering of aggravated tax fraud" in the case of alleged embezzlement by the BDL to the detriment of the Lebanese state, Mediapart reported on Thursday.
An amount of "nearly $246 million" is said to have been transferred to the personal accounts of Raja Salameh, the governor's brother, who is under investigation in Lebanon and who was arrested and then released on bail of nearly $3.7 million last spring.
Calling Riad Salameh "the man of [her] life," Anna Kosakova, a 46-year-old Ukrainian woman, becomes the first person to be prosecuted in the investigation by the French national prosecutor's office. French investigators took over the case in July 2021 following complaints filed in April of the same year by the Group of Victims of Fraudulent and Criminal Practices in Lebanon and the French association Sherpa, an NGO that defends victims of economic crimes.
"Money laundering," "concealment," "swindling," "deceptive commercial practices," "criminal association" and "lack of justification of resources" with aggravating circumstances are among the grievances of the complaint, to which the magazine Le Commerce du Levant had access at the time.
Anna Kosakova has now been placed under judicial supervision and forbidden to leave French territory, in addition to being temporarily removed from the management of the companies BET, ZEL and Eciffice, which were reportedly used for alleged money laundering.
This article will be updated
