Lebanon: forensic financial audit failed after central bank kept secret

The Central Bank of Lebanon announced today, Wednesday, that the government should be the one to present all its accounts for the forensic audit of the accounts, after the interim government asked it to provide the required data to the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, which is conducting the audit under a contract between it and the Ministry of Finance.
The bank added, in a statement issued after a meeting of its central council headed by the bank’s governor, Riad Salameh, that it could not provide data related to government accounts because that would violate bank secrecy laws in Lebanon, and He emphasized that he had provided the company with data related to his accounts.
The head of the provisional government, Hassan Diab, had made contacts to follow up on the criminal audit file at the Banque du Liban. He also sent a letter to the Minister of Finance, Ghazni Wazni, requesting the bank to act in accordance with the opinion of the Legislation and Consultation Commission of the Ministry of Justice, which considered that it is “the duty of the interested parties to direct the execution of the decision. of the Cabinet “. Allow Álvarez to carry out his mission and deliver the documents that are required of them, withholding the names of the clients when necessary and replacing them with numbers to preserve bank secrecy, noting that state accounts are not subject to bank secrecy.
The Minister of Justice in the interim government, Marie-Claude Negm, tweeted, saying: “Criminal financial audit: existing laws allow it, existing brokerages do not allow it, this is the equation, and other than that, word of mouth . I appeal to the members of the Central Council of the Banque du Liban to arbitrate their consciences and comply with the law, and assume responsibility before the government, the people and history.
Meanwhile, today a meeting was held between the Minister of Finance, Ghazi Wazni, and Daniel James, director of the Álvarez company, to discuss the options that will be taken regarding the subject of the contract during the next twenty-four hours.
James said: “We came to assess whether the Banque du Liban provided enough information to allow Alvarez & Marsal to begin the forensic audit.”
Notably, criminal scrutiny is at the core of the French initiative to resolve the political crisis in Lebanon, and was mentioned in the document that was released after President Emmanuel Macron’s second visit to Beirut last September.