“Lebanon Debate”
Day after day, new chapters of financial scandals related to the former Governor of the Bank of Lebanon, Riad Salama, are unfolding, in a file that reveals how the Central Bank was treated as if it were private property, while the Lebanese were prevented from withdrawing their deposits. In one of the most shocking incidents, the data shows that a shipping company was used as a front to cross more than $70 million through complex financial routes that were suspected of being used to hide the real beneficiaries of the money.
In this context, the Bank of Lebanon filed a new complaint before the Financial Public Prosecution against Riad Salama and a number of his family members, including his brother Raja Salama and his girlfriend Stephanie Saliba, in a new financial file added to the series of cases related to suspicious transfers that took place over the past years.
According to the information, the new file emerged after the transfers that were passing through Raja Salama’s “Fawry” company were exposed, and it later became clear that there was another financial path that took place through a company called “V-Invest,” to which more than $70 million was transferred.
The seriousness of the file, according to the data, lies in the fact that the aforementioned company is not a consulting company or a financial or investment institution as its name might suggest, but rather it is in fact a company operating in the shipping sector, which raises major question marks about how it can be used to pass this volume of funds.
The information indicates that Raja Salama is the authorized signatory on behalf of the company, while it is suspected that the actual beneficiaries of the transferred funds are members of the Salama family, directly or indirectly.
According to the data, the money was passing through the aforementioned company within a complex financial mechanism, as it was used as a front to hide the transfer routes and redistribute the funds away from direct control, in what is suspected to be part of an integrated financial system that aimed to hide the real beneficiaries of the operations.
The Bank of Lebanon submitted the complaint before the Financial Public Prosecution, where it was received by the Financial Public Prosecutor, Judge Fouad Murad, who began studying the file and the documents attached to it, in preparation for setting a hearing date and launching judicial investigations.
In contrast to this scene, the current governor of the Bank of Lebanon, Karim Saied, is recorded for adopting a completely opposite approach, which is based on opening files that have remained for years surrounded by political and financial prohibitions, and following a clear path to trace the funds, transfers, and companies that were used to drain the institution’s monetary funds.
According to the following circles, Saeed is waging a real battle to uncover what happened inside the Bank of Lebanon and recover what can be recovered of the Lebanese people’s money, based on the conviction that protecting depositors does not begin with slogans, but rather by exposing the networks that contributed to wasting their money and holding accountable everyone who was involved in transforming the Central Bank into a private financial farm.
