A graffiti accusing former Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh in Jounieh (Kesrouan) on April 2, 2022. (Credit: P.H.B.)
The former governor of Banque du Liban (BDL), Riad Salameh, has been placed in provisional detention for further investigation following a hearing with the acting prosecutor general at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar.
He was summoned last Thursday by the criminal police and can now be detained for up to four days or until new evidence emerges. Tax lawyer Karim Daher, a member of the Aldic (Lebanese Association for the Rights and Interests of Taxpayers), summarized for L’Orient-Le Jour the main elements of this case.
The hearing requested by Hajjar is not directly related to the other investigations and proceedings against Salameh in Lebanon and abroad, such as the Forry case involving his brother Raja or the case of forged bank statements stamped by a Lebanese bank, AM Bank, all of which have not yet been adjudicated. None of the cases led by Ghada Aoun in Lebanon are linked either, despite the obvious similarities involving Optimum and its suspicious transactions with the Central Bank of Lebanon and the banking sector in general.
A&M and Kroll
The procedure initiated under Hajjar specifically addresses one of the findings from the forensic audit report conducted by the international firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), which was commissioned by the Lebanese government in 2020 and delivered its report in July 2023.
The investigation focuses on three transactions between the BDL and the company Optimum Invest. The central bank is alleged to have conducted transactions between 2015 and 2016 where it sold Lebanese Treasury bills to the Lebanese financial company and then immediately repurchased the same bills with a premium. These transactions are reported to have totaled $111 million, placed in a "consultation account" at the BDL, with the beneficiaries being unknown.
When several civil society groups pressured caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil (himself a former Central Bank official) in 2023 to make the A&M report's findings public, former Attorney General Ghassan Oueidate divided the preliminary investigation into three parts: one he handled himself and passed to his successor Jamal Hajjar; a second was assigned to financial prosecutor Ali Ibrahim; and the third was given to the Special Investigation Commission, currently chaired by the interim governor of the BDL, Wassim Mansouri.
Hajjar also worked with the government to reach today’s hearing, in which Salameh is being detained to clarify the legality of transactions involving a portion of the $111 million, estimated at $40 million.
It is also noteworthy that the $111 million is part of a total commission amounting to $8 billion (12,000 billion pounds at the old official exchange rate of LL1,507.5 to the dollar), identified in another audit conducted in 2023 by the international firm Kroll on Optimum Invest’s accounts at the request of the company’s new management, which sought to clear itself of any wrongdoing. The company changed ownership in 2020 after being acquired by the Lebanese bank Libank (Levant Investment Bank SAL).