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Beirut (AFP)
On Monday, the Lebanese parliament passed a law stipulating the suspension of bank secrecy for one year, paving the way for re-launching criminal scrutiny of central bank accounts.
And last month, the forensic auditing company “Álvarez y Marsal” terminated its contract with Lebanon to audit the accounts of the Central Bank, after it was unable to obtain all the documents required of it, as some of them “opposed “, according to the Central Bank, to the” Banking Confidentiality “law.
The forensic audit of the bank’s accounts is the most prominent element of the economic recovery plan that was approved by the government to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund before the negotiations failed. It was also mentioned in the provisions of the roadmap drawn up by France to help Lebanon emerge from the cycle of economic collapse.
The National News Agency reported that the House of Representatives approved the bill aimed at suspending bank secrecy for one year after merging four bills “according to the decision issued by the House of Representatives” last month.
Parliament voted in late November to carry out a criminal scrutiny “without any hindrance or invoking bank secrecy”, in response to a request from President Michel Aoun.
Lawyer Nizar Saghieh, executive director of the Legal Agenda, a non-governmental organization specializing in legal matters and concerned with explaining and interpreting the laws, warned that the approval of the law “is just a spectacular step (…) in terms of its implementation is another matter. “
He explained that the law “does allow criminal scrutiny, but on the condition that the government approves the audit and assigns a new company to the matter without delay.”
Saghieh pointed out a fundamental problem in the law, which lies in suspending bank secrecy for one year, and explained that “if the criminal audit report is issued a year and we go to court, we will return to the same problem with the restoration of bank secrecy. “.
In May, parliament passed a law to remove bank secrecy from state officials, in a move that also received skepticism from human rights monitors.
The interim government headed by Hassan Diab has been in charge of the country’s affairs since his resignation following the Beirut port bombing, while former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who was appointed in October to form the government, has been unable to complete its mission so far due to political divisions.
Since last year, Lebanon has witnessed an economic collapse that coincided with an unprecedented drop in the value of the lira. In March, the state defaulted on the payment of its external debts and then began negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, which were later suspended pending the unification of Lebanese negotiators, especially representatives of the government and the Bank of Lebanon, their estimates of the size of the losses and how the reforms should be implemented.
The parliament session lasted approximately three hours and passed several laws, including proposing a law to punish harassment, especially in the workplace, and passing amendments to a law on domestic violence.
© 2020 AFP
