The announcement came as a bolt from the blue in Lebanon. Then, quickly, the surprise gave way to questions and suspicions on the part of the Lebanese, who are not used to the political-financial oligarchy being troubled by the courts. On Tuesday, September 3, the former governor of the Banque du Liban (BDL), Riad Salamé, was taken into custody in Beirut on suspicion of “embezzlement of public funds.”
At the head of the central bank for thirty years, from 1993 to July 2023, the 74-year-old Lebanese treasurer had never been arrested, despite an arrest warrant issued by France in 2023 and an Interpol report. Suspected of embezzlement of public funds and money laundering, allegations he denies, he is the subject of several investigations in Lebanon and Europe.
“Riad Salamé has always been at the disposal of the Lebanese justice system. He therefore responded to the summons of the Beirut public prosecutor, as he had previously responded to all the summonses of Lebanese magistrates beforehand.”reacted for The World his Parisian lawyer, Pierre-Olivier Sur. Riad Salamé was notified of his police custody by the acting attorney general at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar, at the end of a three-hour hearing.
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This police custody, intended for further investigation, may not exceed the legal duration of four days. According to a judicial source who requested anonymity, quoted by Agence France-Presse, criminal proceedings could be initiated against Mr. Salamé for “embezzlement of public funds, forgery, abuse of power and money laundering.”
His hearing on Tuesday focused on the Optimum affair, which concerns transactions deemed suspicious between the central bank and the Lebanese brokerage firm Optimum Invest, managed at the time of the events by a relative by marriage of Mr. Salamé. A forensic audit, carried out by the international accounting firm Kroll, noted transactions amounting to $8 billion (7.2 billion euros) between 2015 and 2018. “These transactions would have, in their almost totality, made it possible to disguise the losses of the BDL resulting from the financial engineering developed by Riad Salamé. The investigation must now prove this”underlines tax lawyer Karim Daher.
Refusal to provide information
The banker was specifically questioned about $40 million in questionable commissions among $111 million in profits placed in a “consultation account” opened at the BDL, the beneficiaries of which are unknown. These sums were highlighted in the forensic audit carried out by the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal in July 2023. Riad Salamé has always refused to provide information relating to this account, in the name of banking secrecy. His interim replacement, Wassim Mansouri, handed them over to Judge Hajjar, who opened the investigation at the end of July after taking over from Judge Ghassan Oueidate in February.
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