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Public disagreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon regarding criminal scrutiny only means more obstruction of a file, as time passes, the more complex it becomes. Riad Salameh comes out with a statement confirming the decision of the Central Council of the Banque du Liban to cooperate with the auditing company, then passes an indication that it turned over all the Central Bank accounts on October 13. While the follow-up sources assume that Salameh’s statement was a response to the position of the President of the Republic, who spoke the day before yesterday (in an interview with his colleague Adam Shams al-Din, published on the website “Al-Jadid” ) about the delay preventing the launch of the criminal audit, but this did not prevent Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni from being provoked, who realizes that the content of the statement does not differ from the content of the last book he received from the Banque du Liban. For this reason, Wazni issued a statement on Twitter, denouncing Salama’s words, stating that what he delivered on that date was only a fraction of the information requested by the company Álvarez & Marsal, which is in charge of auditing the accounts of the Central Bank. .
The battle for criminal scrutiny, which the President of the Republic described as a battle for liberation, “will happen,” as he told my colleague Shams al-Din. But that doesn’t hide the fact that “a job lasted a week. Four months they sent correspondence and letters, and then people asked what the criminal audit was like.”
There are some who want criminal scrutiny. The four months that have passed since the enactment of Law No. 200 have been filled with correspondence with no more work than wasting time. As for Banque du Liban’s continued assurance to cooperate with the audit, it did not translate into meeting requests from the Alvarez & Marsal company to resume its work. The company has previously mentioned these requests in two separate letters to the Ministry of Finance (1/6/2021 and 2/28/2021). The company requested that the Banque du Liban provide concrete evidence of cooperation with it, sending information that it had previously refused to hand over to the Ministry of Finance, provided that the latter matched it and then sent it to the company for evaluation. If it is sufficient to initiate the audit, it will inform the Lebanese government of its final decision to rehire or not.
All of the above simply means that the long waiting period can end with the company’s refusal to complete its work, requiring the search for a new company to take over the task and thus the need for months. additional.
As a result, the statement issued by the Governor of the Banque du Liban and the response issued by the Minister of Finance was nothing more than a continuation of the “official” dispute that had started as a result of the book that the Governor of the Banque du Liban Liban sent to the Minister of Finance, and the reply letter that Ghazi Wazni sent to Riad Salameh.
On March 24, after the meeting of the bank’s central council, Salameh wrote to the Minister of Finance, to inform him that the Central Council had taken a second decision in relation to cooperation with the forensic auditing company “Alvarez & Marsal” . (the first decision was issued on February 10), confirming the bank’s commitment to cooperate with the company and the establishment of accounts related to all state accounts and bank accounts at the disposal of the Minister of Finance.
The Central Council approves making a computer available to the auditing company!
On October 13, 2020, the bank indicated in its letter that it delivered all the accounts that belong to the Minister of Finance, through the government commissioner at the Banque du Liban. He stressed that “I am fully prepared to ensure all the facilities that ensure the company in question, to start the audit process.” To do this, “the Central Council believes that it is more appropriate to put an independent computer at the disposal of the company to download all the information required from the latter.”
As in all previous books, the bank once again emphasized the need not to use this information except for those who have the capacity to do so and within the conditions and purposes for which it was delivered, and not to share this data with any internal personnel. . or external except the one with which you have contracted exclusively.
The Bank of Lebanon book reached the Ministry of Finance five days after its issuance, that is, on March 29, and the Minister of Finance responded yesterday, confirming what was expressed in his statement via “Twitter” regarding his rejection of the indication from the bank that you had turned over your completed accounts. Wazni explained that what the Banque du Liban delivered on paper to the Ministry of Finance “are not accounts belonging to the Banque du Liban, but consist of documents and information required from the company“ Alvarez & Marsal ”in the Information Request List . He recalled that this information “was not, according to the company’s assessment, sufficient not even to start the forensic audit process, and the lack of documents led it to terminate the contract signed with the Ministry on November 20, 2020.” Consequently, Wazni emphasized that the information presented to the Ministry of Finance constitutes only a modest part of the information required under the information list that included a request for information on: accounts, information and accounting systems, the bank’s structure and the organizational work, the governance and control rules adopted, the infrastructure for the collection of technology, information, as well as electronic equipment in the bank.
Wazni recalled a letter that Salama sent to the Ministry on October 14, 2020, in which he explicitly stated that 42 percent of the required documents have been deposited and that the rest are inconsistent with applicable laws, and that some of them are not. can be cared for. Due to its connection with the company’s request to be present at the bank it was prohibited, which was what the bank had categorically refused.
Wazni asked: Is it possible, in light of the desired cooperation and in light of the provisions of the law to lift bank secrecy for auditing needs, that Finance expects to receive the remaining 58 percent of the documents to match the information provided by the Banque du Liban with the list of information required by «Alvarez»? If this is achieved, then the second step is supposed to be to inform the company of the results of this match in accordance with what it proposed to rebuild the trust that had been lost through its dealings with the Banque du Liban, and to this, after your evaluation, to make your final decision?
Consequently, Wazni reaffirmed that “what the Central Council considered a presentation of accounts is an incorrect incident and contradicts reality.”
In response to the Central Council’s proposal to make a separate computer available to the company, Wazni said that what the company has been asking since its inception is to be able to access the central bank’s accounting system and be in the bank building because it is not It is necessary to remove documents from the building in order to carry out their tasks, and there is no separate computer that can be made available to them.
Even the bank’s reference to the need to respect the confidentiality of the information and the need not to use it except by those who have the capacity and do not share it with any external or internal party, my weight did not transfer, indicating that this is “Nothing else what a fear out of place ”.
What happens after this intense debate between the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Lebanon? The next round will be in the virtual meeting that the two parties will hold with the company “Alvarez & Marsal”, which ratified its importance. Will it be the real start of forensic scrutiny or a new round towards further obstruction?
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