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Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Saturday that the criminal audit of the Lebanese Central Bank is necessary to combat corruption, and stressed that he will take the necessary measures to get it back on track after the withdrawal of a consulting firm hired to carry out the audit.
In a televised address on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of Lebanon’s independence, President Aoun added that “barricades of interest” were set up to obstruct the scrutiny process, which he described as a basic requirement of foreign donors and the International Monetary Fund to help Lebanon emerge from financial collapse.
Aoun described the withdrawal of an international auditing firm, Alvarez & Marsal, as a “setback to the logic of establishing the state, since criminal auditing is the gateway to all reform.”
On the anniversary of his country’s independence, the Lebanese president warned that Lebanon has become “a prisoner of a system of political, financial and administrative corruption covered with various types of shields” and “a prisoner of dictates, external disputes and hostilities. internal that make independence, sovereignty and democracy empty words. “
I will not back down on the criminal financial audit issue, whatever the obstacles, and I will take the necessary steps to get back on track …
The deputies call on the nation to fulfill its legislative duty, on the basis of which the people have placed their trust in them.
I call on the media to fight this battle with all honesty and transparency, because this is the true scenario to fight corruption.– General Michel Aoun (@General_Aoun) November 21, 2020
The reason for the withdrawal
The company justified the suspension of its work the day before yesterday, Friday, for not having obtained the information and documents required, and its lack of certainty of reaching that information, despite having obtained earlier this month to extend its work for 3 months to receive the required documents.
President Aoun, his current and some of his allies accuse the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon (Central Bank), Riad Salameh, of delaying the presentation of the required documents to the auditing company, in order to avoid exposing the violations committed by Salameh.
However, the governor of the Banque du Liban stresses that bank secrecy laws prevent him from presenting the accounts requested by the auditing firm, except in the presence of an exceptional law promulgated by Parliament.
The failure of the criminal audit of the Central Bank accounts would delay the implementation of the reforms demanded by international donors, in exchange for providing financial support to the Lebanese government to overcome the country’s economic crisis.
Lebanon has been suffering for months an economic crisis that is the worst since the end of the civil war, in addition to severe political polarization, in a scenario in which the interests of regional and western countries collide, and from time to time Protests emerge demanding accountability from the corrupt and the ruling class.
Diab statement
The head of the interim government, Hassan Diab, said last Friday that corruption “won a new round”, in response to the announcement by the international audit firm that it had withdrawn from auditing the Bank of Lebanon accounts.
On November 3, Diab demanded that the Central Bank hand over all documents to the audit firm, considering that “any attempt to obstruct the audit is classified as an association responsible for causing the suffering of the Lebanese financially, economically and in life. “.
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