A money exchange vendor holds Lebanese lira banknotes at a shop in Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 19, 2023. (Credit: Mohamed Azakir/File Photo/Reuters)
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“The European judges will return next month to complete their investigations with 18 financial and banking figures … including [Banque du Liban (BDL) governor Riad] Salameh and people close to him," a judicial official told AFP on Friday. Magistrates from France, Germany and Luxembourg investigating suspicions of corruption and money laundering by Salameh on Friday concluded a first visit to Lebanon during which they interviewed, with the help of the Lebanese judiciary, two BDL vice-governors, two BDL general directors, bankers in the private sector and an auditor. The three European countries launched a probe into Salameh last year, leading to a multimillion-euro asset seizure and charges against his former romantic partner.
As the lira hit a new record low on the parallel market, Banque du Liban modified the exchange rate for bank dollars and stipulated that Lebanese bank customers living abroad repay their foreign currency loans in “fresh” dollars. Protesters on Friday evening blocked roads in Saida to protest the lira’s depreciation after it crossed the LL51,000 mark earlier in the day. The same day BDL announced that the LL15,000 official exchange rate would substitute the LL8,000 and LL12,000 rates set, respectively, for circulars No. 151 and No. 158, which allow depositors to access modest sums of funds frozen in commercial banks by ad hoc restrictions. Meanwhile, BDL says that Lebanese bank debtors must repay as of Feb. 1 foreign currency loans in US dollars.
The Foreign Ministry on Friday announced that the payment of the minimum contributions to the operating budget of the United Nations “will be made immediately” to restore Lebanon’s voting rights at the UN General Assembly. Lebanon lost its voting rights after failing to pay its assessed contribution of $1,835,303 for the years 2021/2022, UN Secretary-General Antonió Guterres announced on Thursday. The Foreign Ministry also contended that it was being “unfairly” blamed for the loss of voting rights. Lebanon has on several occasions missed or been late paying its UN dues.
The Health Ministry on Friday launched a vaccination campaign to counter the resurgence of COVID-19 and immunize vulnerable people while the "the pandemic is still under control,” caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad said. Abiad announced the availability of the vaccine freely in a number of medical centers, thanking the French Embassy for donating 300,000 bivalent vaccines “which provide protection from the original illness and its variants.” Since the first recorded case of COVID-19 in Lebanon in February 2020, the country has seen 1,227,016 recorded cases of the virus. At least 10,775 of those who have contracted it have died, according to the latest toll published last night by the ministry.
A young soccer player was hospitalized after having been hit by a stray bullet on Saturday, the Beirut Football Academy (BFA) said in a statement on its social networks. Veh Christ Harboyan, aged 12-13 years, is being treated at the American University of Beirut Medical Center where he will “remain under surveillance for three days, and then they will see how to operate on him to remove the bullet” which hit him near his lungs while he was at a stadium in Bir Hassan, a neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut. According to initial information from the investigation, the shot was fired during a funeral in the neighborhood of Ouzai, also south of Beirut, a security source told L'Orient Today. A BFA statement published following the incident lamented the “senseless violence” caused by stray gunfire — a common, often deadly, occurrence in Lebanon.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from over the weekend: “When it comes to Lebanon’s yacht import market, a little duty would go a long way”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz