The Ministry of Justice in Beirut. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros)
Represented by his lawyer Marc Habka, the former governor of the Central Bank (BDL) Riad Salameh filed an appeal on Tuesday before the Beirut indictment chamber against the decision taken last week by the first investigating judge of Beirut, Bilal Halawi, to reject his second request for release submitted a nearly two weeks ago. Last month, Salameh had submitted a first request to this effect to Judge Halawi who had then refused it.
The latter had issued an arrest warrant against the former governor on Sept. 9 after proceedings were initiated by the acting attorney general at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar, who had placed Salameh in pretrial detention on Sept. 3. These two judicial measures were taken due to alleged embezzlement committed in the context of transactions involving Treasury bonds between the BDL and the financial company Optimum Invest in 2015 and 2016. Alleged embezzlement that both parties deny having committed.
Next hearing, Nov. 5
In parallel, Bilal Halawi held a session on Tuesday during which the office of the former Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Najjar, lawyer for BDL, presented him with authorization from the president of the Beirut Bar, Fadi Masri, to file a civil suit against two lawyers involved in the case, Micky Tueni and Marwan Issa al-Khoury. The president of the Bar had satisfied, about ten days ago, a request to this effect from Najjar. According to the rule, lawyers who want to file a complaint against colleagues must be authorized to do so by the president of the Bar.
At the hearing, Tueni and Issa al-Khoury were represented by their lawyers who requested an extension to raise before the judge the grounds for inadmissibility of the authorization provided. The next hearing was set for Nov. 5.
During the same session, Halawi also decided to send the Bar Council a request to authorize the head of state litigation, Helene Iskandar, to file a complaint against Tueni and Issa al-Khoury. Iskandar made a written request to Judge Halawi to join the proceedings against them.
Asked by L'Orient-Le Jour, a senior magistrate who requested anonymity questioned why the bar council would be competent to grant this authorization when Iskandar is a magistrate responsible for defending the interests of the state and not a member of the bar like the lawyers in Najjar's office. Furthermore, the judge said, "the bar council had authorized the financial prosecutor's office to prosecute Tueni and Issa al-Khoury for the acts they are accused of." "This authorization is given for these acts in an objective manner, regardless of any party that requests prosecution of their alleged perpetrators," they explains.
To date, the head of state litigation has not been able to participate in any of the hearings that Judge Halawi held since Sept. 9 in this case. She had requested, as early as Sept. 5, to join the prosecution file opened by the public prosecutor by filing a civil suit. Halawi refused, in particular, because she had not proven her status and had not submitted to him authorization from the competent minister, namely the caretaker finance minister, Youssef Khalil. Iskandar challenged his decision before the Beirut indictment chamber, which rejected her appeal on the grounds that the judge expressed his refusal orally and not in writing.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
