
The headquarters of Banque du Liban in Beirut. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
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Banque du Liban’s Sayrafa exchange rate is set to increase to LL70,000 on the dollar today, BDL Governor Riad Salameh announced last night. The measure is meant to stabilize the rapid depreciation of the Lebanese lira, which hit a record low of LL90,000 to the dollar on the parallel market yesterday. Following Salameh’s announcement, the lira recovered to around LL79,000 on the parallel market as of Thursday morning.
Yesterday, Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Ghassan Oueidat, arbitrated a legal dispute pitting commercial banks against Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun, suspending both her investigation and banking secrecy on bank officials’ accounts. Ouiedat’s circular to Aoun “postpones [her] proceedings against banks” until the necessary appointments enable the plenary assembly of the Court of Cassation — which lost quorum more than one year ago — to rule on banks’ dismissal requests against her, lawyer and president of the Lebanese Association for Taxpayers' Rights (ALDIC) Karim Daher told L’Orient Today. Caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi, after receiving a letter from caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, instructed security forces last week to not enforce Aoun’s rulings. Oueidat also addressed a circular to Lebanese courts about the process to retrieve records from banks during their investigations. Daher said the circular emphasizes that banking secrecy retroactively excludes bank officials’ account information, which they must submit to the “competent courts as soon as they are asked to.” Last month, Aoun filed charges of “money laundering” against Bank Audi and SGBL after they withheld select officials’ account information. Earlier this week, a banking source told L’Orient Today that commercial banks are waiting for a “decisive reaction” from the judiciary to end their strike — which is temporarily suspended this week — to contest legal pressure and the delayed enactment of a capital control law.
Mount Lebanon first investigating judge Nicolas Mansour scheduled hearings for central bank chief Riad Salameh and other top-level financial officials implicated in the investigation into money exchange group Mecattaf, the Mouttahidoun collective announced yesterday. The investigation into money laundering and illicit enrichment by Mecattaf proceeded after the judiciary rejected the defendants’ appeals. Salameh, the chairwoman of the Banking Control Commission (BCC), the entire staff at Mecattaf, the CEO of SGBL, and employees of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) group will have to be interrogated on April 3, Mouttahidoun added. Last May, State Security unsealed Mecattaf’s headquarters, which had been blocked since an April 2021 raid by Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor judge Ghada Aoun — which, the judge said, procured documents and computers showing “suspicious” logs hinting at an illicit transfer of dollars abroad at the onset of the economic crisis. Aoun received a reprimand for her entry into Mecattaf after she had been dismissed from the case.
A depositor forcibly retrieved some of his funds after threatening to burn down a bank in Saida, South Lebanon. “The case has been solved,” the Creditbank branch manager told L’Orient Today’s correspondent in the area after a depositor, armed with a gas canister, threatened to start a fire if he did not receive the requested sum. Banks this week suspended a month-long open-ended strike, requesting, among other things, the enactment of a capital control law — in the absence of which, banks have been implementing informal holds on depositors’ foreign currency funds since the onset of the economic crisis. Serial bank hold-ups by occasionally armed depositors last year led to weeks of bank closures followed by a partial re-opening with heightened security measures.
The Union of Central and Coastal Qaitaa Municipalities dismissed its former vice president, Yehya Rifai, who is currently under arrest amid an investigation into the murder of a local religious sheikh. Security Forces last week incarcerated Rifai and other relatives of Karkaf sheikh Ahmad Rifai — who had been missing for a week when his body was found buried days after the arrests. Yehya Rifai lost his status as mayor of Karkaf on Tuesday after mass resignations in the village’s municipal council forced his disposal. The Lebanese Army yesterday announced their discovery of “a deposit of weapons, ammunition, military equipment, communication tools and masks [as well as] the weapon that was used to kill Sheikh Ahmad Rifai,” in or near properties owned by the former mayor. The murder was linked to a family dispute, according to security forces, after reports circulated that the cleric’s disappearance followed a sermon characteristically chastizing Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied any link to the murder after several figures accused the party of being behind the assassination.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read article from yesterday: “What will it take to make Lebanon’s buildings safe from earthquakes?”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz