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Beirut – “Al-Quds Al-Arabi” and agencies:
Days after he stated in his Independence Day message to the Lebanese that “he will not back down from criminal scrutiny or deviate from his fight against corruption entrenched in our institutions,” Lebanese President General Michel Aoun called to the parliament on Tuesday to cooperate with the executive authority so that the state can carry out an accounting audit. The criminal in the accounts of the Banque du Liban.
Aoun, in a message addressed to parliament through the president of parliament, Nabih Berri, highlighted the need for this audit, in accordance with all its international standards, to be withdrawn from all public facilities in the state in order to achieve reform. required and the aid programs that Lebanon needs in its current and suffocating situation.
Aoun warned that Lebanon would be considered a rogue or failed state in the eyes of the international community, with serious repercussions resulting from the Lebanese state’s downfall on the prohibited prohibition of disclosure, accountability and accountability.
Aoun asked “to discuss this message in the House of Representatives according to the rules and to take the position, the procedure or the decision on it.”
In his message, the Lebanese president reviewed “the stages that the approval of the forensic audit has carried out since last March 24 and the decisions taken by the Council of Ministers in this regard, which led to the contracting with the company” Alvarez y Marsal “to carry out the forensic audit task in compliance with the decision of the Council of Ministers.
He noted that the most prominent obstacles that arose that prevented the company from carrying out its mission, especially the issue of bank secrecy, and the reluctance to deliver the required documents and information despite the legal protection that was available for this delivery, until the point of the company’s request to terminate the contract on the 20th of this month.
Aoun considered that what happened “constitutes a serious setback for the logic of the State and the interests of the Lebanese people, which suffers from a monetary, economic, social and suffocating, inherited, reproductive and aggravating crisis, including in particular the Corona pandemic. and the explosion of the port of Beirut “.
President Aoun announced that he had made reform a title of his time, and “synonymous with political stability and security and inseparable from it”, indicating that he would not agree to give in to any pressure, known or hidden, to abandon it or reduce its requirements .
Aoun concluded by asking “to discuss this letter in the House of Representatives in accordance with the principles and take the position, action or decision on the matter”, emphasizing “the need for cooperation with the executive authority that does not prevent the conduct of business from making decisions. appropriate when urgent. “
After receiving the letter, the Speaker of the House of Representatives called for a plenary session at exactly two o’clock in the afternoon next Friday in the UNESCO Palace, in compliance with article 53, paragraph 10 of the Constitution and paragraph 3 of article 145 of the Bylaws to discuss the content of the message from His Excellency the President. The republic that is sent to the Council of Representatives by the Council Speaker to take the appropriate position, action or decision.
The Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri told President Aoun: “A solution to the criminal investigation needs to be found,” in an explicit reference to scrapping it so as not to harm anyone.
Close collaborators of the “Free Patriotic Movement” accuse President Berri, Prime Minister Hariri and former MP Walid Jumblatt of refusing criminal scrutiny and protecting the governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh. Yesterday, however, President Berri’s political aide, Representative Ali Hassan Khalil, returned to confirm the Amal movement’s support for this vote. Other sources reply that the movement wants revenge on Riad Salameh.
Last week, the “powerful Republican conglomerate” proposed a law to suspend some of the bank secrecy clauses that are invoked for not delivering documents to the auditing company. The head of the Lebanese Forces Party, Samir Geagea, said after the meeting of the bloc on Tuesday in Maarab that “the current majority is responsible for the crime that occurred in the criminal audit,” considering that “they are using bank secrecy, and these are false excuses. ” Discover all the facts in the ministries, institutions and funds.
It should be noted that, on July 21, the Council of Ministers approved the use of Alvarez & Marsal to carry out the criminal investigation mission at the Banque du Liban, but the Banque du Liban only provided the company with some documents and information that required, in order to carry out the criminal audit in the bank, due to the Banking Secrecy Law approved in Lebanon.
Last Friday, Álvarez and Misral informed the Minister of Finance of the interim government, Ghazi Wazni, that the agreement signed on the criminal audit at the Banque du Liban had been rescinded because the company had not obtained the necessary documents to begin to fulfill its mission. .
