France to transfer central bank governor’s frozen assets to Lebanon

BEIRUT — The French judiciary has approved requests from the Lebanese government to transfer the frozen assets of Lebanon’s embattled central bank governor to the Lebanese state, the media office of caretaker Justice Minister Henry Khoury said in a Tuesday statement.

The requests were submitted by French lawyers Emmanuel Daoud and Jean-Claude Bouvet representing the Lebanese government.

In March 2022, Europe's agency for criminal justice cooperation, known as Eurojust, announced the seizure of some 120 million euros ($127.78 million) of Lebanese assets linked to an investigation into money laundering in Lebanon. The properties and bank accounts of five people suspected of embezzling $330 million and 5 million euros ($5.44 million) between 2002 and 2021 were seized in France, Germany, Luxembourg, Monaco and Belgium. Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh is a suspect in the case.

Legal proceedings against Salameh were opened in Europe in 2021. In May, France issued an international arrest warrant for Salameh after he failed to show up at a hearing in Paris, where French prosecutors were planning to present fraud and money laundering charges against him. Germany followed suit a week later.

Last Friday, a French judge charged Marianne Hoayek, Salameh’s former assistant at the central bank, with criminal conspiracy and money laundering in the same case. “Marianne Hoayek contests these accusations and will provide proof that these funds came mainly from donations from her father,” a rich businessman now deceased, her lawyer Mario Stasi told Agence France-Presse.

Salameh is also being investigated at home for alleged financial crimes. In March last year, Judge Ghada Aoun charged him with illicit enrichment. The year before, she charged him with mishandling foreign currency and breach of trust.

The 72-year-old governor denies any wrongdoing and has appealed the European decision to freeze his assets. However, on Tuesday a French court upheld the decision to confiscate the assets, a judiciary source in Paris told Reuters. The source, however, did not comment on the decision to transfer the funds to the Lebanese state.

Another judicial source told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Tuesday that the seized funds may reach the Lebanese Ministry of Justice in two weeks. He added that the French decision is the first step for cash-strapped Lebanon to retrieve the stolen funds and assets.

The small Mediterranean country has been reeling under a devastating economic crisis since October 2019. Salameh, who was once hailed as the guarantor of Lebanon’s financial stability, was widely blamed for the country’s crisis and collapse of its currency.

Salameh’s three-decade term in office ends this month and he has already said he does not plan to seek another term, raising concerns about a successor as the country is also facing a presidential vacuum that might hinder the appointment of a new governor.