The leader of the Kataëb party, MP Samy Gemayel, during one of his speeches in Parliament. (Credit: NNA/File)
BEIRUT — Kataeb party leader Samy Gemayel has lodged an appeal with the State Council to compel caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil to hand over the forensic audit of Banque du Liban (BDL) accounts.
The audit was carried out by New York-based firm Alvares & Marsal (A&M) on behalf of the Lebanese state. According to a Kataeb press release, the party also requested that Khalil publish the audit report.
The Christian party said it had previously directed its requests to Khalil, who rejected them. According to the Kataeb, this refusal contravenes the provisions of the Access to Information Act and the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
The party also considers it "inadmissible" for Khalil to invoke confidentiality to justify his refusal to disclose the report's contents, given that the auditor's services had been paid for with public money.
Second appeal for the same information
Kataeb's appeal comes just days after the State Council handed down an initial decision in favor of petitioners also seeking access to the audit report. On Monday, the highest administrative court issued a ruling ordering Khalil to hand over audit-related documents to the NGO Legal Agenda.
Acting on behalf of a coalition of rights organizations, Legal Agenda had referred the matter to the State Council even before A&M had submitted its report to the government.
Contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour, Samy Gemayel's legal advisor, Lara Saade, explained that the State Council's decisions are "personal" and "apply only to those [individuals or legal entities] who have referred the matter to this body."
"The previous verdict therefore obliges the Minister of Finance to give a copy of the report to the collectives who referred the matter to the State Council, and not to the Kataeb leader," Saade added. "In addition to obtaining a copy of the report, we demand that a copy of this document be sent to the Chamber and that it be published on the Ministry of Finance's website so that all Lebanese can have access to it."
The forensic audit of the BDL's accounts was supposed to trace the origin of transactions recorded on the institution's balance sheet, in order to detect possible fraud. It was initially launched in 2020, but it was not until 2022 and under a new contract that A&M was able to start the work because BDL initially refused to hand over the requested information.
The audit service was invoiced at $2.74 million, according to the second contract signed in 2021.
A&M, whose primary specialty is restructuring, was not the first choice to conduct the forensic accounting element of the audit. It was selected by the government after the first candidate was rejected on questionable grounds.
While the BDL audit is one of the prerequisites for the release of a multibillion-dollar aid package from the International Monetary Fund, the forensic accounting component has not been expressly demanded by the IMF.