The main hall of the Palace of Justice in Beirut. (Credit: C.A.)
A former director of Cedrus Bank’s Jounieh branch, identified as C.F., was arrested and questioned on Wednesday following a complaint filed by a depositor, R.M., a well-known dermatologist, in a case involving alleged signature forgery.
R.M. claims that over $1 million in so-called “fees” were fraudulently withdrawn from his account.
The interrogation was conducted by the criminal police under the supervision of Deputy Prosecutor General at the Court of Cassation, Myrna Kallas, who had personally questioned the bank’s director general, former minister Raed Khoury, the week before.
The suspect, a woman, was placed in custody pending completion of the preliminary investigation, according to a source close to the case. It added that the case is based on complaints filed by the client against Cedrus Bank, represented by Khoury as director general, CEO Fadi Assali and another executive, Raoul Cherfan.
The case dates back to earlier this year, when R.M.’s niece, also a Cedrus Bank client, discovered that the balance of her account, which stood at $100,000, dropped to $2,000 even though she had never touched it.
This discovery prompted R.M. to check his own accounts, where he found that a large sum of his money had also disappeared.
According to his review, the signature used to withdraw his funds did not match that of his sister, to whom he had granted power of attorney for such transactions.
An internal investigation by the bank confirmed that the signature was not that of the authorized proxy.
R..M. accused the director of the Jounieh branch of having carried out the withdrawal without his knowledge, said a source at the bank, adding that the director denied the allegations. She was later dismissed by management, while lawsuits were filed against her both by the bank itself and by the depositor, who also filed a claim against Cedrus Bank.
The same banking source disputed that claim, arguing that R.M. had not contested the authenticity of his sister’s signature “when it came to deposits at the bank or transfers abroad made with the same signature he now challenges.”
A source close to the depositor countered that the sister did indeed validate those operations with her own signature, but that they were later fraudulently altered, notably through changes to maturity dates, fund entry dates at the bank, or transfer delays abroad. This “fraud,” the source insisted, involved forging the signature to “falsify” those dates.
On another front, the banking source said that R.M.’s sister had validated all deposit and withdrawal operations at the end of last year by affixing her signature “on each of the 29 pages” of the account statement, thereby approving a balance reduced to “a few tens of thousands of dollars.” The source questioned, therefore, the reasons behind contesting that balance a month later.
In response, the source close to the doctor said surveillance camera footage shows how his sister was urged by bank officials to sign the statements “in a hurry,” unable to read them, while being assured that it was only a routine procedure.
According to the banking source, the doctor had previously maintained “close” ties with the branch director in question, trusting her to the point of entrusting her with managing his funds for financial placements, notably through foreign exchange operations.
The source close to R.M. countered that “those ties were no closer than the usual relationship between regular clients of a bank and its staff.”
‘Activities that do not concern’ Cedrus Bank
The bank, for its part, expressed regret that its name has been linked to “activities that do not concern it,” stressing that the institution “cannot be held responsible for operations unrelated to deposits made at the counter, accompanied by receipts issued to the client.”
These statements were strongly challenged by a source close to the dermatologist, who maintained that he had been contacted by the branch director in her capacity as a representative of the bank to offer him financial products issued by the central bank.
Reached separately by L’Orient-Le Jour, the attorneys for the branch director and for the bank client, Alain Khoury and Rita Rahmeh, both declined to comment on a case still under investigation in which they are representing their clients. Rahmeh said only that a confrontation between all parties is expected soon.
A source close to the case stressed that such a confrontation is indispensable, noting that certain financial transactions, such as the withdrawal of $500,000 deposited the same day by R.M., could not have been carried out without the involvement of the branch director’s superiors.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour by Sahar Ghossoub.
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