BEIRUT: Ten reformist MPs issued a joint statement on Thursday demanding the immediate removal of Riad Salameh from his position as central bank governor.
The MPs condemned Salameh’s approach of “financing the policies of successive governments without accountability” and pledged to form a parliamentary investigation committee.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar reported on Thursday that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati requested Salameh’s resignation in a letter.
It said, however, that the governor categorically refused to step down before the end of his term in July as that would be an “admission of (guilt regarding) the accusations against him, which is unacceptable.”
A judicial source said the Lebanese Public Prosecution had not yet received any memorandum from France over 48 hours after the issuance of the French judicial decision to prosecute and arrest Salameh.
“If the memo arrives, the Lebanese judiciary will request Salameh’s case, which is with the French judiciary, to know the charges against him,” the source said.
Consequently, Salameh would be tried in Lebanon and before the Lebanese judiciary, the source added, and would not be handed over to the French authorities, as happened with Lebanese businessman Carlos Ghosn.
The French judge responsible for investigating Salameh’s funds and assets in Europe, Aude Buresi, issued an international arrest warrant against Salameh after he failed to attend his questioning session before a Paris court, which was scheduled for May 16.
The European investigation — involving France, Germany, and Luxembourg — focuses on the relationship between Banque du Liban and Forry Associates, owned by the governor’s brother, Raja Salameh.
The company is registered in the British Virgin Islands, with an office in Beirut, and is alleged to be a shell company used to transfer money out of Lebanon to European banks.
It is suspected that more than $330 million were embezzled from the central bank through a grant contract with the company, in addition to illegal commissions from local Lebanese banks.
Salameh did not appear before the first investigating judge, Charbel Abou Samra, in Beirut on Thursday as part of the Lebanese investigations.
He — along with his brother Raja and his assistant Marianne Hoayek — has been indicted for crimes including embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, forgery, use of counterfeits, illicit enrichment, and tax evasion.
The legal representatives of the accused appeared before Judge Abou Samra to inquire about the court’s response to the formal objections raised by them.
They had demanded the removal of the Cases Authority at the Ministry of Justice from the case due to lack of jurisdiction.
Judge Abou Samra, however, rejected the objections, saying that the involvement of the Cases Authority in the lawsuit was legally justified.
He also scheduled June 15 for Raja Salameh’s interrogation.
The date for the interrogation of Riad Salameh and Hoayek will be determined later.
Salameh’s defense attorneys did not appeal Judge Abou Samra’s decision.
Despite the charges against him, Salameh is still considered a suspect in the Lebanese investigations.
The judicial source said that the issuance of the indictment made him an accused person, and the judgment made him a convicted person.
The demands for Salameh’s dismissal from his position grew on Thursday because of the judicial developments.
This step requires a Cabinet session, but there are differences of opinion regarding the legitimacy of holding such a meeting in light of the caretaker government and the presidential vacuum.
Samir Hammoud, former head of the Banking Control Commission, said: “The decision to circulate Salameh’s name to Interpol seems to have been made in advance, and what is happening in the judiciary is still within the preliminary procedures.”
Hammoud said Lebanon was experiencing an unprecedented financial crisis, ongoing in the context of the presidential vacuum, the presence of a caretaker government and the controversy over its powers to appoint a new central bank governor.
Ten reformist MPs issued a joint statement on Thursday demanding “the immediate removal of the accused, Riad Salameh, from his position.”
The MPs questioned: “Is it acceptable for the person pursued in these heinous and dangerous crimes to remain at the helm of governance, given the powers granted to him to oversee the safety of the national currency and the financial system?
“Is it acceptable for the Lebanese judiciary to engage in unpredictable adventures aimed at covering up the governor’s reluctance to attend investigation sessions in France?”
In the joint statement, opposition parties and groups emphasized that “the issuance of an international arrest warrant against Salameh is a crucial milestone in holding the ruling political and financial class accountable, which has become accustomed to general amnesty and impunity despite their numerous crimes against the Lebanese people.”
They stressed that “the extremely serious and unprecedented charges against the governor of the central bank necessitate his immediate removal from his position.”
The arrest warrant, they said, “represents a historic and very dangerous precedent for Lebanon’s financial reputation and evidence of the state’s decay due to the absence of accountability and supervision under the rule of the mafia and militia.”
They added: “The governor must resign immediately, in compliance with the principle of responsibility and the relevant provisions of the Code of Money and Credit, which hold the pursued governor accountable for his dereliction of duty and gross mismanagement of affairs.”
The opposition parties and groups hold the parliament responsible for the vacancy in the governorship of the central bank, as it has thus far failed to elect a president.
A president can serve as a gateway to reconstitute an executive authority with full powers to appoint a governor, they added.
Demands grow for dismissal of Lebanese central bank governor amid economic crisis
https://arab.news/9juxh
Demands grow for dismissal of Lebanese central bank governor amid economic crisis
- Lebanese judiciary ‘will not hand over Salameh to France,’ a key source tells Arab News
- Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar reported on Thursday that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati requested Salameh’s resignation in a letter
Sudan’s war puts charity kitchen workers feeding displaced families at risk
- The real number of workers killed is likely far higher than the estimated 100, he says, but the war has prevented reliable data collection and record-keeping
CAIRO: Enas Arbab fled Sudan’s western region of Darfur after her hometown fell to Sudanese paramilitary forces, taking only her year-old son with her and the memory of her father, who was killed, she said, simply for working at a charity kitchen serving people displaced by the fighting.
The Rapid Support Forces — or RSF, a paramilitary group that has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023 — had laid siege on el-Fasher in the western Darfur region, starving people out before it overran the city.
UN officials say several thousand civilians were killed in the RSF takeover of el-Fasher last October. Only 40 percent of the city’s 260,000 residents managed to flee the onslaught, thousands of whom were wounded, the officials said. The fate of the rest remains unknown.
During the fighting, Arbab says RSF fighters took her father, Mohamed ِArbab, from their home after beating him in front of the family, and demanded a ransom. When the family couldn’t pay, they told them they had killed him, she says. To this day, the family doesn’t know where his body is.
When her husband disappeared a month later, Enas Arbab decided to flee north, to Egypt. “We couldn’t stay in el-Fasher,” she said. “It was no longer safe and there was no food or water.”
Her father was one of more than 100 charity kitchen workers who have been killed since the war began, according to workers who spoke with The Associated Press and the Aid Workers Security database, a group that tracks major incidents around the world impacting aid workers.
In areas of intense fighting — especially in Darfur — famine is spreading and food and basic supplies are scarce. The community-led public kitchens have become a lifeline but many working there have been abducted, robbed, arrested, beaten or killed.
Grim numbers in a brutal war
Volunteer Salah Semsaya with the Emergency Response Rooms — a group that emerged as a local initiative and now operates in 13 provinces across Sudan, with 26,000 volunteers — acknowledges the dangers faced by workers in charity kitchens.
The real number of workers killed is likely far higher than the estimated 100, he says, but the war has prevented reliable data collection and record-keeping.
Semsaya shared records showing that 57 percent of the documented killings of charity kitchen workers occurred in Khartoum, mainly while the Sudanese capital was under RSF control, before the army retook it last March. At least 21 percent of the killings were in Darfur.
More than 50 of those killed in Khartoum worked with his group, Semsaya said.
Sudan’s war erupted after tensions between the army and the RSF escalated into fighting that began in Khartoum and spread nationwide, killing thousands and triggering mass displacement, disease outbreaks and severe food insecurity. Aid workers were frequently targeted.
Dan Teng’o, communications chief at the UN office for humanitarian affairs, says it’s unclear whether charity kitchen workers are targeted because of their work or because of their perceived affiliation with one side or other in the war.
The kitchen workers are prominent in their communities because of the work they do, making them obvious targets, activists say. Ransom demands typically range from $2,000 to $5,000, often rising once families make initial payments.
“A clear deterioration in the security context ... has significantly affected local communities, including volunteers supporting community kitchens,” Teng’o said.
Kitchen workers face risks
Farouk Abkar, a 60-year-old from el-Fasher, spent a year handing out sacks of grain at a charity kitchen in Zamzam camp, just 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of the city. He survived drone strikes and remembers the day RSF fighters attacked his kitchen. One of them punched him in the face, knocking some of his teeth out.
Abkar said he fled el-Fasher at night with his daughter, walking for 10 days. Along the way, some RSF fighters fired birdshot, which hit him in the head, leaving a chronic headache.
Now in Egypt, he shares an apartment with at least 10 other Sudanese refugees and can’t afford medical care. The harrowing images from his hometown still haunt him.
“Many things happened in el-Fasher,” he said. “There was death. There was starvation.”
Mustafa Khater, a 28-year-old charity kitchen worker, fled with his pregnant wife to Egypt a few days before el-Fasher fell to the RSF.
During the 18-month siege, some el-Fasher residents collaborated with the RSF, telling the paramilitary fighters who the kitchen workers were, Khater said. Many disappeared.
“They would take you to an area where there is a dry riverbed and kill you there,” Khater said.
A volunteer working with Semsaya’s aid group in Darfur said some of his colleagues were beaten, arrested and interrogated, with their attackers accusing them of receiving “illicit funds” for the kitchen. The volunteer spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Despite the challenges, many charity kitchens remain the only reliable food source in areas gripped by conflict and a place people can come to and give each other support, Semsaya said.
Struggling to feed thousands
The town of Khazan Jedid in East Darfur province has three charity kitchens feeding about 5,000 people daily, said Haroun Abdelrahman, a spokesperson for the Emergency Response Rooms’ branch in the area.
Abdelrahman says he was once interrogated by RSF fighters, while several of his colleagues have been robbed at knifepoint. Despite the fear and harassment, many kitchen workers are still volunteering and working, he said.
In Kassala in eastern Sudan, military agents questioned a volunteer with the branch there and his colleagues in January 2024, he said, after their kitchen started serving food and providing shelter to people who escaped nearby Wad Madani when RSF seized that town. He also spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals.
Khater, the 28-year-old who fled el-Fasher, said he heard from friends back home that after the RSF takeover, all charity kitchens in the city closed and his colleagues were either “killed or fled.”
Teng’o says the closures in areas of fighting have left “vulnerable households with no viable alternatives” and forced people to shop at local “markets where food prices are unaffordable.”
Arbab, the pregnant 19-year-old who fled with her baby boy, had hoped to rebuild her life in Egypt, her friends and a humanitarian worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about the young mother.
But while on the road to the northern city of Alexandria last month, she and her son were stopped by Egyptian authorities and deported back to Sudan.
