A New Complaint Against Salameh And Others According To The Amended Illicit Enrichment Law

A New Complaint Against Salameh And Others According To The Amended Illicit Enrichment Law

            After being asked today, Monday February 8 2021 by United For Lebanon, Anti-Corruption (UFL), a group of lawyers emerging from the "Smallville Meeting" filed a complaint registered under the number 88/SH, before the General Prosecutor of Mount Lebanon Judge Ghada Aoun.

For the crime of illicit enrichment (in accordance with the provisions of Articles 10, 11, 12 and 14 of Law No. 189 of 10/16/2020), they personally prosecuted the Governor of Banque du Liban Riad Salameh, the financier Abd al-Rahman al-Fayed, the head of the Banking Supervision Committee Maya Dabbagh, and the owner of the Dollar importation company: financier Michel Maktaf. They also sued these individuals for abuse of entrustment -according to Article 670 of the Penal Code-, job negligence and other related crimes in regards to their squandering of the subsidized dollar and their unlawful appropriation of the portions allocated to support the ‘food baskets’ initiative and medical supplies.

            To those facts mentioned in the complaint, the plaintiffs had attached five fundamental documents to showcase traders’ manipulation of food and medical prices as well as their smuggling of the said goods abroad- similar to their previous smuggling of the American Dollar and how it devaluated the national currency and gave way to manipulations of the exchange rate; leading-up to depositors’ funds being withheld and affecting citizens’ sustenance and health security- all in disobedience to the Joint Ministerial Decision No. 4/1 /A.T. /M. The claimants had also included a list demonstrating how the goods’ extravagant rise in prices reflects the subsidized dollar’s scarcity.

The accusers had also demanded that the appropriate precautionary measures be taken under the new and amended Illicit Enrichment Law such as travel bans, lifting bank secrecy off of the defendants’ accounts as well as freezing them, immobilizing the entries and records pertaining to their transferrable and non-transferrable funds, and even taking a temporary measure of returning the funds in question to Lebanon to place them in the hands of the judicial authority behind the investigation. It was also demanded that their complaint be tied to the prosecution handled by the Appeal Public Prosecution in Mount Lebanon, against the aforementioned defendants, before its First Investigative Judge: Nicolas Mansour for the offenses of entrustment abuse, job negligence and the like (a session that would have been set for today in regards to such allegations, and devoted to formal defenses); prompting Judge Aoun today to issue a decision -under the No. 1031/2021- to be referred to Judge Mansour in order to partake in his prosecution.

            Also today, and in a related context, Attys. Jihad Debian and Samantha El-Hajjar attended the hearing held by Mount Lebanon’s Prosecutor Judge Aoun for the plaintiff lawyers who themselves had submitted the complaint against Governor Riad Salameh, his assistant Marianne El-Hoayek and his brother Raja Salameh, for the $400Million transfers mentioned in the Swiss correspondence. The session concluded with Judge Aoun issuing a decision to join this case to the investigation she had conducted in this regard with journalist Dima Sadik and her companions, as well as mandating the Minister of Justice Marie-Claude Najm to provide us with a copy of the Swiss state correspondent, so as not to resort to the Swiss embassy or other representative bodies for a copy; all through a judicial decision issued by the Public Prosecution Office of Appeals in Mount Lebanon.