The van in which Riad Salameh was transported outside Beirut courthouse, Sept. 9, 2024.
BEIRUT — Beirut's interim investigating judge, Bilal Halawi, issued an arrest warrant on Monday for Riad Salameh, the former governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon (BDL). The warrant followed an interrogation that took place earlier in the morning at the Beirut courthouse.
Salameh's interrogation occurred after a turbulent transfer from his detention facility.
He will remain in custody, as further investigation continues.
More than a year after his removal from office, Salameh was arrested on Sept. 3 in connection with the Optimum Invest case, which involves transactions conducted between the BDL and a Lebanese financial firm in 2015-2016.
He is also the subject of multiple investigations into alleged financial misconduct, including those led by Ghada Aoun, the Attorney General at the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeals. Aoun has indicated her intention to leverage this arrest to advance her own cases. Additionally, Salameh faces corruption charges in several European countries. He continues to deny the allegations against him.
Informed sources have reported that Judge Halawi barred Helene Iskandar, head of the State Litigation Department, from attending the hearing because she lacked a certificate verifying her credentials from caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil. Another source indicated that this issue stemmed from a "procedural error" and that efforts are being made to correct it. The Lebanese state has joined the case against Salameh as a civil party.
Salameh booed by demonstrators
Salameh arrived at the scene shortly before 10 a.m. in a van with tinted windows and was met with boos from about a hundred demonstrators.
The atmosphere was highly charged, according to our local journalist, Claude Assaf. Some protesters pounded on the van's hood and windows, chanting "Harameh, harameh, Riad Salameh harameh" (in English, Riad Salameh is a thief).
At the sit-in organized by Lebanese protesters outside the court, Elias Jaradeh, a member of parliament from southern Lebanon, participated and spoke to L'Orient-Le Jour. Jaradeh addressed the dispute between Aoun and the public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar. "I hope there will be no circumvention of the procedure," he said.
Since June, Hajjar has threatened to remove Aoun from the case and has demanded she hand over all documents she is handling, including those related to Optimum Invest. "If this happens, we will oppose it," the MP added.
Escalation at the Justice Palace
Another figure present was Ibrahim Abdallah, one of the activists who filed the Optimum Invest complaint. He warned that if Salameh was not arrested by the end of the hearing, "there will be an escalation." Another protester, holding a loudspeaker, urged Halawi to "complete the investigation" or face "something very serious" and "a bloody revenge."
Conversely, the protester joked that if the judge does complete the investigation, he will be "entitled to haleweh," an Arabic sweet made with sesame paste, in a play on the judge's surname.
Security measures inside the Palace of Justice in Beirut were extremely tight. Lawyers involved in cases related to the litigants they represent were denied access to the registries near Halawi's office. The entrance on the first floor, leading to the second floor where Halawi's office is located, was also blocked by law enforcement officers. A violent altercation occurred between one officer and a bar member. Eventually, an officer intervened and allowed the lawyers to enter, but only one by one.