Post-crisis fund transfers: Accountability for all not yet on the agenda

By ordering, on Aug. 14 the repatriation of funds transferred abroad after Oct. 17, 2019 — a watershed date in Lebanon's collapse — financial prosecutor Judge Maher Sheaito gave immense hope to all those demanding an end to impunity for alleged special privileges enjoyed over the past five years by the banking and political elite.While this decision remains "historic" given past inaction, its scope is nevertheless much more limited than a first reading of the reports might suggest: far from a broad challenge, the decision falls within the narrow framework of specific cases that had been brought to his predecessor, Ali Ibrahim, and which had remained buried in the financial prosecutor's drawers.Judge Sheaito revived these cases to keep his promise to the country’s top authorities not to let them be forgotten, as had...