The former governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh. Archived photo AFP.
Although her retirement is scheduled for March 1, the attorney general at the Court of Appeal of Mount Lebanon is continuing her legal battle in cases related to former Banque du Liban (BDL) Governor Riad Salameh.
On Thursday, she filed new lawsuits against him, mainly for embezzlement and illicit enrichment, in the Optimum Invest SAL case. According to international audit firms Alvarez & Marsal and Kroll, the brokerage firm is linked to “unjustified commissions” totaling $8 billion. As part of a financial arrangement, the BDL allegedly sold Lebanese Treasury bonds to Optimum, then repurchased them shortly after at a much higher price.
The former president of Optimum, Antoine Salameh, is also targeted in the case, along with former BDL Executive Director Raja Abou Asli. A judicial source told L’Orient-Le Jour that Abou Asli is accused of a conflict of interest due to his roles at both the central bank and as a partner at Optimum.
The prosecutor has also filed lawsuits against interim BDL Governor Wassim Mansouri. According to the judicial source, Mansouri failed to comply with her request for information on the fate of suspicious funds, in violation of the 2022 banking secrecy law. Under that law, the Special Investigation Commission (SIC), chaired by the BDL governor, is required to lift banking secrecy upon the judiciary’s request in cases of suspected illicit enrichment and money laundering, the source said.
However, according to a document reviewed by L’Orient-Le Jour, interim Public Prosecutor Jamal Hajjar instructed Mansouri not to cooperate with Judge Aoun. She has been sidelined from all financial cases since June 2024, when the head prosecutor ordered her to hand them over — a directive she refused. A judicial source said Mansouri followed Hajjar’s instructions and submitted all relevant documents and information to him.
Aoun transferred the prosecution files to Mount Lebanon’s first investigative judge, Nicolas Mansour, as she did with lawsuits filed Monday against Riad Salameh. She accuses the former governor of distributing fresh dollars to five banks — Bank Audi, Bank of Beirut, SGBL, BankMed, and Crédit Libanais — after the financial crisis erupted in October 2019.
Mansour is also handling prosecution files against these banks, which the appeal prosecutor accuses of transferring $3.5 billion abroad while depositors were largely unable to access their funds.