BDL Governor Riad Salameh. (Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP/file photo)
BEIRUT —Banque Du Liban's governor Riad Salameh will not be appearing in the hearing session set for him on Tuesday by investigating judge Aude Buresi in Paris, because he was "not notified of the session," a senior judiciary source told L'Orient-Le Jour.
Salameh is the subject of investigation by a delegation of European magistrates on suspicion of financial malpractice. Along with his brother Raja and former assistant Marianne Hoyek, the BDL governor faces charges of corruption, forgery, money laundering, illicit enrichment and tax evasion. All three individuals have denied the charges.
Lebanese security forces went for four consecutive days last week to the BDL headquarters to deliver the summons, without success, a Lebanese judicial source told AFP on Monday. "Each time they went, the head of security at the BDL told them he [Salameh] was absent," the source added.
Last March, Buresi visited Beirut to participate in Salameh's trial, which was conducted by the First Investigating Judge of Beirut, Charbel Abou Samra. Buresi informed Salameh that she intended to question him in Paris on May 16. But Judge Abou Samra refused this means of notification, claiming that the courtroom is not a place for a foreign magistrate to notify a Lebanese citizen.
Buresi then went through the regular channels, and filed a request to the Lebanese Cassation Prosecutor's Office, which then transmitted the document to Judge Abu Samra. According to L'Orient-Le Jour's senior judicial informant, Abou Samra has since tried three times to notify Salameh of the trial, but the document was returned to him each time without signature (and without acknowledgment of receipt). According to L'Orient's source, it was the responsibility of the security forces to notify Salameh of the charges, specifically the Minet el-Hosn police station in Beirut.
The source said security personnel went to BDL, only to find that the governor was "untraceable." None of the officials or employees, including his secretary and office manager, agreed to sign, citing incompetence. However, the same judicial source stated that the head of the office is in fact competent to receive the document addressed to the governor. Asked why Judge Abu Samra did not simply send it to another address, the source said that the notification must be sent only to the address mentioned in the letter, namely the headquarters of the BDL.
The European delegation, made up of French, German and Luxembourg magistrates, arrived in Beirut on April 24 and questioned Raja Salameh at the beginning of May, with the purpose of investigating Forry Associates Ltd, a company belonging to the governor's brother. Marianne Hoyek appeared before the judges on April 27 and 28.