The former director-general of the road traffic department, Hoda Salloum. (Credit: NNA/File photo)
BEIRUT — The first investigating judge of Mount Lebanon, Nicolas Mansour, has nullified all the records of the preliminary interrogation of the former director-general of the road traffic department in an ongoing case related to corruption in the Vehicle Registration Center, the state-run National News Agency reported on Monday.
Mansour considered "the records of the preliminary interrogation as a record of general information and not a record of an official interrogation," based on the fact that "the Court of Cassation had already invalidated the records of the preliminary interrogation that were not signed by a clerk," the NNA reported.
Sources told L’Orient Today that public prosecutor at the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal, Nazek el-Khatib, conducted Salloum's initial interrogation at the information division at 11 p.m. and no clerk was present to document what was being said; therefore, Mansour rejected the document as unofficial.
These sources told L’Orient Today that the record of the interrogation “will be used as general information in upcoming investigations but will not be regarded as an official document.”
“If the document was official the charges would have been 100 percent proven against Salloum,” one of these sources claimed.
Mansour also rejected the formal defenses submitted by Salloum's lawyer Marwan Daher, and will keep them suspended, pending the expiration of the deadline for appealing his decision to complete the normal procedures regarding the file
Sources told L'Orient Today that since the document is no longer considered official, Salloum should be released; however, they said Mansour rejected her release due to a delay in the public prosecution appealing Mansour's decision before the indictment.
Salloum, was arrested last month on Khatib's orders for further investigation in an ongoing case related to corruption in the Vehicle Registration Center, Mansour confirmed to L'Orient Today.