Around 10 days before her planned retirement on March 1, the general prosecutor at the Court of Appeal of Mount Lebanon, Ghada Aoun, filed lawsuits Monday against five banks and the former governor of the Central Bank (BDL), Riad Salameh. The cases have been transferred to the chief investigative judge at the Court of Appeal of Mount Lebanon, Nicolas Mansour.

Under the charges of breach of trust and money laundering, Judge Aoun accused the banks of having moved a total of $3.5 billion out of the country between the beginning of the financial crisis (October 2019) and March 2020. Since that time, these banks were imposing maximum restrictions on Lebanese citizens, drastically limiting their cash withdrawals.

Ghada Aoun accused Salameh of having granted the targeted banks loans in fresh dollars. The magistrate notified her decision to the head of the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar, who apparently will not cooperate. He previously asked the magistrate to hand over all financial cases she was handling, particularly those related to the former BDL governor. Faced with Aoun's refusal, he had, in June 2024, banned all security services from complying with her instructions. This is why the magistrate limited herself to notifying representatives of the banks through civil bailiffs and LibanPost, an informed source told L'Orient-Le Jour.