Former BDL governor Riad Salameh on Dec. 20, 2021. (Archive photo: Joseph Eid/AFP)
BEIRUT — The lawyers for the former governor of the Banque du Liban (BDL, central bank), Riad Salameh, announced that they have filed a request for release with the first investigating judge of Beirut, Roula Othman. The request is "based on legal grounds, material evidence, as well as health reasons," according to a statement from his lawyer, Wassim Ghawi. Contacted by L’Orient-Le Jour, Ghaoui estimated that the judge should rule by the beginning of next week.
The request comes more than a month and a half after the arrest of Salameh on July 31, 2026, by the prosecutor general at the Court of Cassation, followed by his placement in pretrial detention by the general prosecutor at the Court of Appeal on Aug. 12. The former governor is being held at the Dahr El Bachek Government University Hospital, where he was transferred from Roumieh prison in August after he decided to abstain from eating and taking his medication to protest his incarceration.
Salameh, who is also the target of several judicial proceedings in Lebanon and abroad — particularly for alleged corruption, which he denies — was the subject of an arrest warrant at the end of July after he failed to appear at a hearing summoned by the prosecutor general at the Court of Cassation, Rami al-Hajj.
The ongoing investigation was triggered by a complaint filed and announced last January by the current BDL governor, Karim Souhaid, against Salameh and former Bank Audi CEO Samir Hanna. The case concerns, in particular, shares acquired in 2010 by a group of investors, brought together by Bank Audi, from the Egyptian company EFG Hermes, which was then the main shareholder of the Lebanese bank.
According to a source close to the case, EFG Hermes sold its entire stake in Bank Audi for about $900 million; a Cayman Islands-based company, MOSF, then acquired a portion of Bank Audi's shares by issuing, in exchange, bonds secured by both these shares and by the credit of Bank Audi. BDL subsequently subscribed to these bonds for $153 million.
Wassim Ghawi states that "contrary to the original referral act underlying the prosecution of Salameh for embezzlement of BDL funds, the civil party, namely BDL itself, explicitly confirmed that the loan granted to Bank Audi in 2010 was decided by the Central Council and not personally by the governor," an argument he has previously raised at other stages of the proceedings. He adds that "this loan was fully repaid in 2012, with 5% interest, amounting to $33 million. The second loan, granted in 2014, was also fully repaid in 2016, with interest of 6.5%."
Beirut investigative judge Sheherazade Nasser, who questioned Salameh on Aug. 12, 2026, "issued a detention order against him without stating the factual and material reasons" for her decision and "without respecting the minimum conditions for pretrial detention provided for in Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure," according to the same source. Finally, attorney Ghawi mentions "medical reports" attesting to the frailty of the former governor's health and to risks to "his life and physical integrity."
