After the criminal audit struck … a safe exit for Salameh?

Forensic audit entered the waiting tunnel. Neither his death nor its continuation is announced. Alvarez & Marsal director Daniel James told Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni when he met with him yesterday that the information the company obtained, in response to the questions he asked for the first time, was not sufficient. While she did not receive any response to her second request (the deadline expired the day before yesterday), this led her to a dead end and therefore requires withdrawal. Given this reality, my weight asked to wait 24 hours to study the possible options. In the context of this proposal, it was sought to freeze the grace period for about two months, which practically leads to the non-termination of the contract, which stipulates that the company may terminate it in case it cannot obtain the necessary information to carry out the auditory. It is true that the contract does not address such a freezing or postponement of deadlines, but the agreement of the two parties to the amendment may eliminate the legal problem, without it being clear whether an oral agreement may be sufficient or that the matter needs to amend the text. of the contract.

The Álvarez delegation, which is meeting today with the presidents of the republic and the government, does not seem to oppose the extension, but the problem lies in what may change during this period. Those who wish to postpone depend on variables that may arise, including the possibility of submitting a bill to the House of Representatives that requires the Central Bank to cooperate with the auditing firm and stripping it of any legal argument. However, according to the obvious, the course of the proposal, which was previously revealed by deputy Ibrahim Kanaan, has been postponed until the outcome of the other options presented is clarified, including the study prepared by the Ministry of Justice, based on the opinion of the Consultation and Legislation Authority.
The Banque du Liban did not settle for not responding to “Álvarez’s” requests, but also held government institutions responsible for the failure of the audits. After the Central Council meeting, the bank issued a statement in which it indicated that it did not object to the opinion of the advisory council. Ignoring the basis of the query, which indicates that the Banque du Liban is obliged to implement the decision of the Council of Ministers, and in the event that there is data pertaining to the bank’s clients, the name may be replaced by symbols. And he went to the paragraph indicating that “the banking secrecy observed in Lebanese law does not apply to state accounts and the accounts of the Bank of Lebanon”, thus confirming that “he has handed over all his accounts to His Excellency the Minister of Finance in accordance with the rules. ” But it cannot deliver state accounts. If you want, you can go to the Banque du Liban, which “avoids violating legally binding secrecy laws, and the violation of which will have criminal consequences.”

The Central Bank holds the State responsible: it did not request the lifting of the secrecy of its accounts

The Banque du Liban wants all government or interested institutions to submit a request to lift the confidentiality of their accounts, despite the fact that the audit decision was issued by the combined government, and despite the fact that the advice that allows it to provide information was issued by the state legal advisor.
According to the information, the Central Bank, in its refusal to cooperate with “Álvarez” and its insistence on annulling all the official requests it received, relied on a legal opinion presented by former Minister of Justice Ibrahim Najjar. Najjar had indicated that the advice of the legislative committee is neither binding nor legal. The law does not need consultation for its implementation, it is imposed. Consequently, he pointed out that “the banking secrecy law is a private law, while the access to information law (the Minister of Justice dealt with it in the study that she presented to the Presidency of the Government), which is a general law, does not provide for the lifting of bank secrecy. It is decided that private law is not repealed by a general law, but prevails over it and requires a special law to repeal or modify it.
Armed with this opinion, Salameh decided to end the criminal audit. After confirming that he had submitted, in accordance with the law, all the documents requested by the auditing firms KPMG and Oliver Wyman, he charted the path that was acceptable to him and his followers. In politics, most parties treat criminal scrutiny as an impossibility. Even passing the law is seen as an unattainable prospect. Salameh’s defense line has not changed. Without equivocation, Nabih Berri and Saad Hariri avoid damaging Salameh. The two have not changed positions yet. Therefore, confidence within is governed by vetoes that have become clear.

Domestic interests interrupt criminal scrutiny: will the French activate their initiative?

These votes are likely to increase after Hariri is prime minister again. There is no alternative, according to informed sources, to expect external trends. French President Emmanuel Macron had previously confirmed, during his visit to Lebanon, the priority of criminal audit at the Central Bank. The French initiative also included auditing the accounts of the Bank of Lebanon, while the International Monetary Fund insists on auditing the financial accounts, without this being conditional on a criminal audit. Here’s the whole point. No one seems willing to put the Temple at the head of an authority that has benefited from its integrity, engineering, and games for decades. At the same time, however, the tenure of Salameh is no longer a requirement for anyone. The agreement that was discussed above and appears to remain valid, without any estimate of the date of its implementation, is the safe departure of Salamah from the government of the Bank of Lebanon. The latter, as previously reported, is not opposed to the idea, but does not want to present it to the Lebanese parties. The central bank governor wants a personal guarantee from Macron that he will not be prosecuted after his resignation, provided he leaves Lebanon to live abroad and hand over his duties to whomever France chooses. He seeks to obtain this guarantee, considering that there are those who want to make him a political scapegoat. He had previously informed France of his willingness to work on reforms in the financial sector with the Central Bank of France and not with any other party.

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