A wanted actress, telecoms strike escalation, a dethroned drug baron: Everything you need to know to start your Friday

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Parliament is scheduled to convene next Thursday for the tenth and last presidential election session of 2022 after yet another failed effort yesterday. While the outcome of yesterday’s session once again pitted sole apparent candidate Zgharta MP Michel Moawad against a majority of spoiled and blank votes, there was a reduced number of blank ballots. The Free Patriotic Movement, along with Hezbollah and their allies, had consistently cast blank ballots in previous sessions. However, a disagreement between the two parties over a controversial cabinet meeting on Monday led to the new vote distribution, construed as a display of dissatisfaction by FPM MPs. In a statement yesterday, Hezbollah responded to Bassil’s earlier accusations of “betrayal” against the party, denying any agreement between the two parties to display solidarity in boycotts. The party also attempted to disentangle the disagreement over the meeting from the disagreement between Hezbollah and the FPM over Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh’s viability as a presidential candidate.

A wanted Lebanese actress reportedly close to Riad Salameh passed through airport security into Lebanon unimpeded. Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun previously issued a search warrant against actress Stephanie Saliba in connection to an investigation of theft of public funds and money laundering. “According to the law, anyone who is the subject of a search warrant must be apprehended,” lawyer Wadih Akl told L’Orient Today. According to the FPM-affiliated channel, OTV, Judge Aoun will take legal action against anyone who prevented the execution of the search warrant. Case documents published last week announced that the French judiciary indicted Salameh’s former romantic partner, Anna Kosakova, on charges of “criminal conspiracy,” “laundering in [an] organized gang” and “laundering of aggravated tax fraud.”

Caretaker Telecoms Minister Johnny Corm threatened legal action as state mobile network operators Touch and Alfa employees held their fourth day of open-ended strike. Corm attempted to dissuade the striking workers in a statement claiming their demands would backfire. Ogero and Alfa employees’ union head Marc Aoun responded to Corm’s statement by threatening an “escalation” of the strike, without specifying which measures that implies. Aoun reiterated the workers’ demands for adjusted wages and “equality among employees” for promotions and pay raises. The union head accused Alfa and Touch management of planning to divide striking workers by issuing selective promotions. A Parliament session to discuss alleged corruption in the telecoms sector scheduled for this week fell through after some MPs announced a boycott, claiming the presidential vacuum prevents legislators from meeting for non-presidential election sessions.

The Lebanese judiciary dethroned the “Captagon king,” marking the country’s first conviction of a major drug producer and trafficker. The court convicted drug baron Hassan Dekko after his arrest by security forces in April for “manufacturing Captagon pills and smuggling them abroad.” He was sentenced to seven years of hard labor. Twenty-five other people, including three of Dekko’s’s brothers, were sentenced in absentia to hard labor for life. The drug kingpin is thought to have run a narcotics empire out of a Lebanese border village using businesses he owns as fronts for the illicit trade. Lebanese authorities regularly intercept Captagon shipments destined to be smuggled out of Lebanon as the drug’s trade booms amid the economic crisis.

In case you missed it, here's our must-read story from yesterday: “In the Arab world, everyone unites behind Morocco”

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz