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MORNING BRIEF

Salameh travel ban lifted, no funding for municipal elections, suspended EDL strike: Everything you need to know to start your Thursday

Here’s what happened yesterday and what to expect today, Thursday, April 13:

Salameh travel ban lifted, no funding for municipal elections, suspended EDL strike: Everything you need to know to start your Thursday

The headquarters of Banque du Liban in Beirut. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)

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A judicial source told AFP that the travel ban against embattled Banque du Liban (BDL) governor Riad Salameh will be lifted today, a week after France summoned him for a hearing scheduled for May 16. Salameh could still contend that a hearing in Lebanon scheduled for May 18 prevents him from attending, the judicial source said. Salameh’s French lawyer, Pierre-Olivier Sur, told Reuters he may challenge the French hearing, noting that their investigators’ questioning of Salameh as a witness in Beirut creates an “insurmountable gap” for formally naming him as a suspect. In May, the French judiciary also intends to discuss a request for the restoration of tens of millions of euros’ worth of assets seized in an investigation into Salameh. The apartments and bank deposit seizure alleges that they were acquired through embezzled commissions from the sale of BDL assets, reportedly siphoned through Forry Associates — a company that lists Riad Salameh’s brother, Raja, as an economic beneficiary. A delegation of European investigators is expected to return for a third visit to Beirut this month for hearings with Raja Salameh and Marianne Howayek, formerly an assistant to the central bank chief — both of whom, along with Riad Salameh, also face local charges of embezzlement, illicit enrichment and money laundering.

Municipal elections are less than a month away with no funding and no registered candidates, Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab said after a joint parliamentary committee meeting yesterday. Starting the municipal elections on May 7 “has become nearly impossible,” Bou Saab said, adding that the caretaker government has “done nothing” to finance the race. Last week, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced municipal elections will begin, as previously scheduled, on May 7 in North Lebanon and Akkar, after which ballot boxes will open in other regions each week until May 28. Mawlawi called on the government to secure “$8 million” to hold the elections. Caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil — absent from yesterday’s session — proposed the use of a supplementary appropriation in the 2022 budget of LL1.5 billion to cover the costs. The Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb have suggested the use of the government’s International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights — which Khalil rejected. After yesterday’s session, Free Patriotic Movement MP Alain Aoun said his party would participate in a Parliament session to extend the mandate of municipalities — which Lebanese Forces MP Georges Adwan said his party will boycott due to the ongoing presidential vacuum.

Electricité du Liban (EDL) employees, after meeting with caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil, announced the suspension of a strike that they had planned to hold from yesterday until next Tuesday. Khalil “promised us to find positive solutions, and we promised him, in turn, to end the strike that we had called for,” read a statement by the EDL employees union, sent to L’Orient Today by syndicate secretary Mohammed Sabbagh. EDL employees yesterday protested from inside their offices after Khalil refused to grant them reduced electricity tariffs. In February, EDL began billing subscribers according to new, increased tariffs, leading to a wave of citizens canceling their state electricity contracts to mitigate steep electricity costs compounded by the price of private generator subscriptions — a costly necessity amid spotty state power provision. While electricity tariffs increased, EDL employees’ salaries — along with the compensation of other workers in the public sector — sharply fell amid the lira’s depreciation, despite pay adjustments included in the 2022 budget.

Mount Lebanon Investigating Judge Ziad Daghidi ordered the release on bail of the director general of the Road Traffic Department, Hoda Salloum, along with five other suspects held in a corruption investigation into the public sector, a judicial source told L’Orient Today. If Daghidi’s request is approved by the prosecutor’s office, the release of Salloum and five other suspects will be subject to an LL300-million bail and a travel ban. Last November, security forces arrested Salloum for “professional negligence.” Salloum’s arrest came days after State Security filed arrest warrants against several traffic department employees after a raid on the Dekwaneh Vehicle Registration Center which allegedly revealed forged documents and proof of embezzlement within the department. By January, more than a hundred employees in the traffic and land registry departments had been arrested. Vehicle registration centers saw crowds form on Tuesday on the first day of reopening after almost six months of closure.

The Internal Security Forces announced the arrest of four men who allegedly stole tens of thousands of dollars in a premeditated robbery. The suspects are accused of stealing around $38,000 and LL127,000,000 at gunpoint after intercepting a car ferrying the funds for an unidentified firm on the highway near Beirut International Airport. “An employee of the company was in cahoots with the criminals,” the statement said. The ISF said the four men were arrested following a series of raids between March 13 and 27 in Chehim (Chouf), Biakout (Metn) and Bourj al-Barajneh, a neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: A restored Sursock Museum returns

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz

Want to get the Morning Brief by email? Click here to sign up.A judicial source told AFP that the travel ban against embattled Banque du Liban (BDL) governor Riad Salameh will be lifted today, a week after France summoned him for a hearing scheduled for May 16. Salameh could still contend that a hearing in Lebanon scheduled for May 18 prevents him from attending, the judicial source said....