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The United States and its allies have for months been calling for financial supervision from the central bank, which they believe may reveal money laundering operations and links to prominent Hezbollah officials, including the central bank.
Threats to the central bank include imposing sanctions, according to Western officials, a rare step that the United States often takes on its enemies in North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. Generally, the financial audit examines and scrutinizes for evidence of fraud and other activities that could be used in the judiciary. Washington is using Lebanon’s need for urgent financial aid to gain scrutiny and shed light on the central bank’s dark operations, an official said.
Audit efforts were unsuccessful this month when the agency that commissioned the process decided to withdraw because it said it did not have access to central bank records. Acting Prime Minister Hassan Diab said: “They thwarted a criminal audit today,” after the Finance Ministry announced on November 20 that New York-based financial auditing firm Alvarez & Marsal had stepped down from the job, citing parties. not identified in the country. “The wall of corruption is too thick and too high to repair,” Diab said.
Current and former Western Lebanese officials said: “Influential political and economic actors in Lebanon have obstructed international efforts to subject the Bank of Lebanon to a top-down review.”
Among those obstructing the audit are the governor of the Banque du Liban and Lebanese officials who oversee financial organizations that have ties to Hezbollah in a way that makes them vulnerable to sanctions from the United States and its allies.
On a visit to Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale in August, he expressed concern, saying: “There needs to be a lot of focus on the central bank and a need to audit the central bank accounts so that we can understand exactly what it happened there. ”
The newspaper noted, “The Beirut port explosion, in which more than 178 people were killed, by the ignition of ammonium nitrate stored for a long time in one of its warehouses, which made the need for urgent financial assistance urgent.”
After months of disputes over central bank scrutiny which led to the failure of talks with the International Monetary Fund to provide a rescue package for Lebanon. A former Finance Ministry official said: “A full review will not take place as long as the bank’s governor, Riad Salameh, remains in the position he has held for three decades. Salameh declined to comment on the newspaper’s questions, but denied the questions. accusations about his relationship with corruption and Hezbollah. “
The bank remained vulnerable to protests, the latest of which was last month when protesters tried to enter after the collapse of the Lebanese pound.
US officials and their allies said: “The weak supervision of the Bank of Lebanon has helped spread the corruption mentioned in a series of US sanctions.”
And earlier this month, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil.
He said it represents rampant corruption within the Lebanese political system. Bassil replied that “the accusations are unfounded” and considered “the sanctions as retaliation because he refused to comply with certain US demands.”
Officials said: “The Banque du Liban was instrumental in funding the group that is classified as a terrorist in the United States, Hezbollah, including attacks against US allies, and there is evidence that fueled concern over the revised documents by the newspaper revealing that the Banque du Liban allowed known Hezbollah accounts in a private bank that remained in effect even after the United States requested that it be closed. “
The party’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, said in May that “Salameh is aware of the party’s financial activities, which he has allowed due to the party’s classification in the United States.
He said: “Go, check and ask the teller, the bank and the governor of the Banque du Liban, and they know that we are bringing dollars into the country.”
Current and former officials have raised concerns about Hezbollah’s ability to conduct financial activity in a way that allows it to fund operations against US allies and support its ally Iran. US officials claim that “most of Hezbollah’s financial activities abroad stem from illegal activities, including drug smuggling.”
US officials say Salameh closed some Hezbollah accounts at their request, but the party’s ability to access the financial system made it prosper.
“The Lebanese crisis provides an opportunity to do what they fought in the past, which is to use financial diplomacy to limit Hezbollah’s influence and reform the corrupt political system,” Lebanese officials say.
US officials say “there is no rescue package without thorough scrutiny and implementation of the policies requested by the International Monetary Fund.”
Current and former officials believe that “without close scrutiny, Lebanese financial problems cannot be assessed, including whether the Bank of Lebanon has foreign exchange reserves to prevent the Lebanese currency from collapsing and increasing inflation.”
The newspaper says: “Targeted sanctions give the United States the ability to link Hezbollah representatives to the government. US Under Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Schenker declined to comment earlier this year. on possible sanctions targets, but generally said: “We have always said we would target Hezbollah allies. .
The United States is also targeting, according to people familiar with the matter, Ahmed Ibrahim Safa, who stepped down as a member of the supervisory board on the Lebanon exchange.
Security analysts believe that “Safa worked as a financial facilitator for Hezbollah through his public and private positions.”
Safa’s name appeared in US investigations in 2011 at the Canadian Lebanese Bank.
