Lebanon Banking Chief Maintains Innocence in European Embezzlement Probe

Lebanese police stand outside the Justice Palace as Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salameh attends a court hearing alongside European investigators, according to sources, in Beirut, Lebanon March 17, 2023. (Reuters)
Lebanese police stand outside the Justice Palace as Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salameh attends a court hearing alongside European investigators, according to sources, in Beirut, Lebanon March 17, 2023. (Reuters)
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Lebanon Banking Chief Maintains Innocence in European Embezzlement Probe

Lebanese police stand outside the Justice Palace as Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salameh attends a court hearing alongside European investigators, according to sources, in Beirut, Lebanon March 17, 2023. (Reuters)
Lebanese police stand outside the Justice Palace as Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salameh attends a court hearing alongside European investigators, according to sources, in Beirut, Lebanon March 17, 2023. (Reuters)

Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh maintained his innocence Friday following a second and final day of questioning in Beirut before European investigators in a probe into his personal wealth.

Salameh, 72, is part of the Lebanese political class widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history.

He faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad, with investigators examining the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job.

Following a three-hour session Friday, Salameh released a statement saying he appeared as a witness and "not as a suspect or facing charges".

"Funds from the Lebanese central bank were not transferred to my account," he said in a statement, adding: "The transfers I made abroad, whatever the amount, were from my personal account."

The European investigators, including representatives of authorities in France, Germany and Luxembourg, are looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement.

Salameh "answered all the questions" and "pledged to provide all the documents tracing the sources of his wealth" as well as the addresses of people mentioned in the questioning sessions, a judicial official told AFP.

Members of the European delegation plan to return to Beirut in April to question Salameh's brother Raja and former assistant Marianne Hoayek, the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to discuss matter with the press.

198 questions

Thursday's questioning session at Beirut's heavily guarded justice palace, which lasted more than five hours, was the first time Salameh had appeared as part of the European probe.

The hearing had been scheduled to begin on Wednesday but Salameh failed to show up, claiming it was in "conflict with national sovereignty", an argument the judiciary rejected.

For procedural reasons, the European investigators submitted their questions to a Lebanese judge, who was then responsible for putting them to Salameh in their presence, a judicial source previously told AFP.

Salameh had answered 198 questions during the two sessions, the first judicial official said, mostly about the central bank's ties to Forry Associates Ltd, a British Virgin Islands-registered company that listed Salameh's brother as its beneficiary.

Forry is suspected of having brokered Lebanese treasury bonds and Eurobonds at a commission, which was then allegedly transferred to bank accounts abroad.

Salameh denied that any central bank funds had gone to the company.

He decried "ill intentions" against him and blamed an "ongoing media campaign" for his legal woes.

In January, the European investigators interviewed banking officials in Beirut about the transfer of funds to countries where Salameh has significant assets.

During this week's sessions, Salameh was also questioned about "the huge funds and real estate he owns in Lebanon and abroad," the official said.

France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth 120 million euros ($130 million) in March 2022 in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh's personal wealth.

The three-decade bank governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has rarely appeared before investigating judges, despite numerous complaints and summonses.

Last month, Lebanese authorities charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of their own investigation.

The domestic probe was opened following a request for assistance from Switzerland's public prosecutor looking into more than $300 million in fund movements by the Salameh brothers.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.