Lebanon’s Ministry of Justice has requested the arrest of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh and his brother, along with the seizure of their assets and accounts. According to local reports, Salameh did not attend the investigation session on corruption charges in the presence of European experts and at the request of Beirut’s first investigating judge, Charbel Abu Samra. In response to this refusal, the head of the Justice Ministry’s Cases Authority, Helena Iskandar, has called for the arrest of the governor and his brother, as well as assistant Marianne Howayek. She has also ordered the freezing of their accounts and those of their respective spouses and minor children to prevent them from disposing of these funds and thus preserve the rights of the Lebanese state.
The pan-Arab channel Al Mayadeen has reported that the indictment of Salameh is due to his involvement in crimes of bribery, forgery of documents, money laundering, illicit enrichment, and tax evasion. Judge Abu Samra has set tomorrow for Salameh’s interrogation and rejected the memorandum submitted by him to absent himself, while assuring that the assistance of European investigators does not contradict Lebanese law or detract from national sovereignty.
Salameh has been in office since 1993 and has been one of the longest-serving central bank governors in the world. The Lebanese consider him to be one of the main culprits behind the country’s current collapse under US protection. In early December 2021, the French financial judiciary indicted a Ukrainian woman close to Salameh on charges including money laundering. European investigations focused on the relationship between Banque du Liban and the company Fore Associates, registered in the Virgin Islands with an office in Beirut, whose economic beneficiary is her brother Raja.