Électricité du Liban headquarters in Beirut. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Financial Prosecutor General Ali Ibrahim on Friday ordered the unsealing of KVA (Arabian Construction Company and Khatib & Alami), a service provider for state-owned Électricité du Liban, a senior judicial source confirmed to L'Orient-Le Jour.
Two KVA executives, the company's director and collection manager, were arrested and released at the end of August in connection with a case of electric meter tampering.
KVA is a consortium of three companies specializing in the management of public services and is in charge of collecting electricity bills for EDL.
This unsealing was decided in order to be able to pay KVA's employees, the aforementioned judicial source explained.
"Investigations are continuing into this case, in which no one has yet been arrested," the same source added.
Last Thursday, another judicial source indicated that "the company, which is a private enterprise under contract with the government, has not adequately fulfilled its role. It is also responsible for maintaining the utilities belonging to EDL, a responsibility it has failed to meet."
Électricité du Liban provides its subscribers with only a handful of hours of electricity a day due to its limited production capacity following the country's financial collapse. As a result, Lebanese residents are forced to rely on costly private generators for their power supply and, in recent years, resort to solar panels.