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In the port of Beirut, smuggling, tax evasion, kickbacks, tenders, questionable public auctions and fictitious salaries benefit high-level employees affiliated with political forces, according to Agence France-Presse.
And it also includes a “fast” line for “Hezbollah,” the prominent political force in Lebanon that keeps its weapons alongside the military, allowing it to pass whatever it wants without supervision, and agreements that benefit officials and employees affiliated with it. the political forces that a large segment of the Lebanese have demanded. His departure.
“The port is one of the most corrupt facilities,” researcher Mohamed Shams El-Din of the International Information Center, who has published several studies on corruption and tax evasion in Lebanon, told the French Press Agency, adding: ” There is no effective control by the government over it, either in raising money or spending it. “
The port of Beirut was established in 1894, and was managed by a French company, then a private company from 1960. In the early 1990s, with the end of the company’s concession, a temporary official committee was appointed to manage it. and it is still in operation. Shams El Din says it operates as a “private company”.
As in all state institutions, the members of the committee are chosen according to their sectarian affiliation: a Sunni president, six members representing the main sects and the privileged ones are supported by the most prominent political parties. Shams al-Din says: “The same quota system in the state applies to the port.”
And Hezbollah uses the port to move goods for itself or for the benefit of businessmen affiliated with it, according to various sources.
The former head of the State Council, Judge Shukri Sader, said: “It is known that there are assets for Hezbollah that pass through the port and the airport,” in addition to the border crossings. He adds, “both at the port and at the airport it has a military line through which goods and merchandise pass without inspection or surveillance,” explaining: “This line is the result of an implicit agreement with the authorities that no one approaches it. “.
In 2019, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on a senior Hezbollah official, Wafiq Safa, for exploiting “Lebanese ports and border crossings for smuggling and facilitating travel on behalf of Hezbollah,” according to a statement from the US embassy in that moment.
The statement cited one example by saying: “Hezbollah profited from Safa to facilitate the passage of materials, including illegal drugs and weapons, through the Beirut port in Lebanon.”
After the explosion, which killed more than 190 people and injured more than 6,500, some spoke of weapons and other illegal materials stored by Hezbollah in the port, but Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah denied any relationship to his party. with the port of Beirut.
Work at the port is not limited to Hezbollah.
A report prepared by a security apparatus a few months ago and whose copy was seen by the French Press Agency, names at least five employees of the customs detachment in the merchandise inspection department, “it is forbidden to replace them”, according to what He says. It details his affiliation with officials affiliated with the political forces (the Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, the Amal Movement headed by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, the Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces Party).
The report details how they and other port employees received bribes in exchange for transactions that removed goods from the port. Experts are not sure whether this illegal proceeds directly benefit the parties or only the employees who are affiliated with them.
The temporary committee for the management of the port was headed by Hassan Quraitem, affiliated with the Future Movement, since 2002 before being detained along with 24 other people, including the director general of Customs Badri Daher, affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement, as part of the ongoing investigation into the explosion resulting, according to authorities, from a fire that broke out in a warehouse that was in storage. Contains 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate for more than six years, without protective measures.
While port officials, regardless of their positions, as well as political, judicial and security officials, were aware of the seriousness of this storage, no steps were taken to prevent the disaster.
Until the explosion, Lebanon had relied for most of its commercial operations on the port through which more than 70 percent of imported goods pass into a country that relies primarily on imports.
The annual revenue of the port administration is around $ 220 million, of which only $ 60 million goes to the state treasury, according to researcher Muhammad Shams al-Din, who explains that the rest is supposed to be used for wages and salaries and for port development, “but we don’t really know where it is going.”
As for customs, annual customs evasion, mostly from the port, is estimated at between one and two billion dollars in a country in which the budget deficit during the last two years has ranged from five to more than six thousand millions of dollars.
Over the years, corruption scandals have been publicized on several occasions and soon his files were returned to the drawers, without anyone being held accountable.
Shams al-Din says that prominent political forces use their influence to hire people affiliated with them in the port or to appoint officials who turn a blind eye to smuggling and customs smuggling operations of businessmen who support one or that party, or to influence the contracts of many companies with the port administration.
Shams El Din points out that the smuggling operations are most often carried out “through bogus charities that obtain a government decree exempting them from customs duties … as long as everyone knows the truth of the matter.”
The security report shows that port employees, from the youngest to the oldest, and the members of the security services who also work there, receive bribes that vary according to the goods that speed up their passage, reduce their transit fees or they turn a blind eye.
For example, according to the report, the head of each division that oversees the main entrance to the port would charge two hundred thousand pounds for the used car to facilitate its exit. Others in customs also receive their share of the used car, and their task is to reduce its value in the appraisal process, thus reducing the cost of the tax on it.
As for what’s more dangerous than that, it’s “smuggling,” like guns and drugs, for example, which are sometimes smuggled into used cars, according to the report.
The irony is that the only X-ray detector in the port, the “scanner”, is broken. The port administration did not change it. And stopping the scanner means inspections are carried out only manually, making violations easy. Duty payments and goods issue are still done on paper and manually.
