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Beirut – The prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, heard this Thursday from the Governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, about the content of a Swiss correspondence that Lebanon received a few days ago requesting assistance in the investigation of financial transfers from Salama and two close people to the. .
The correspondence concerned transfers for $ 400 million, belonging to Salama, his brother, his assistant and institutions affiliated with the Central Bank, including Middle East Airlines and Lebanon Casino.
The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office confirmed on Tuesday that it had “sent, through official means, a request for legal assistance to the competent Lebanese authorities.” He explained that his request is linked to “an investigation into money laundering (…) in relation to possible embezzlement of funds from the Banque du Liban”, without mentioning the names of the suspects.
Oweidat met with Salameh Thursday in his office at the Courthouse for an hour. A judicial source said that Oweidat reported on the security of the contents of the Swiss Attorney General’s book. Salameh was quoted as saying that “he will go to Switzerland to defend himself against the charges against him.”
In a statement after the meeting, Salameh stated that he had provided Oweidat with “all the answers to the questions he had raised, both on the original basis and on behalf of the Swiss prosecutor.” He added: “I assured him that no transfers were made from the accounts of the Banque du Liban or its budgets.”
According to the judicial source, Salama Oweidat reported that “the total transfers he made do not exceed 240 million dollars, and since 2002 they have begun to finance a company that he established with his brother Raja in Switzerland 20 years ago, and was completed from his own accounts “.
According to the same source, Oweidat will ask the Banque du Liban for documents explaining how the transfers were carried out and the value and date of each transfer, provided that it responds to the request for Swiss legal assistance after obtaining the required information.
The correspondence requests, as explained by a judicial source, to give the Swiss side answers to a series of questions that should be posed to Salameh and the two mentioned persons. But “he did not include evidence or documents to prove or reinforce the suspicions he is talking about.”
Lebanon’s political parties kept Salameh, considered the godfather of the stability of the pound, responsible for the collapse of the national currency. And harshly criticize the monetary policies it has adopted in recent years, as it has accumulated debt. However, Salameh repeatedly defended himself by stating that the Central Bank “financed the state but did not disburse the money.”
Analysts and observers accuse political leaders and officials of transferring huge sums of their accounts abroad, following the unprecedented popular demonstrations that broke out in October 2019 against the political class, despite strict banking restrictions.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, close to Hezbollah and which often draws harsh criticism of Salameh and the banking sector, reported Tuesday that investigations with Salameh are underway within a file that includes a large number of Lebanese personalities according to a “Suspicious list” prepared in cooperation between France, Britain and the United States. “
Lebanon is witnessing an economic collapse that is the worst in the country’s history, coinciding with an unprecedented drop in the value of the lira. In March, the country defaulted on the payment of its external debts and then began negotiations with the International Monetary Fund that were later suspended.
