After the opening of a judicial investigation concerning suspicions of embezzlement of funds from the Bank of Lebanon by its former governor Riad Salamé, Sherpa filed a new complaint with the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office. The objective: shedding light on the conditions under which Lebanese political figures like Najib Mikati accumulated considerable wealth and on the role of financial intermediaries who facilitated these acquisitions.
In 2019, as Lebanon entered an unprecedented banking and financial crisis, Sherpa and the Collective of Victims of Fraudulent and Criminal Practices in Lebanon filed a first complaint concerning suspected misappropriation of Lebanese public funds. At the very core of a widespread corruption scheme and its enablers – the financial intermediaries – Sherpa drew the attention of the French authorities on Riad Salamé, then governor of the central bank of Lebanon, and the conditions under which he and some of his relatives had accumulated significant assets in France. Since then, a judicial investigation has been opened and authorities are investigating in France as well as in Luxembourg. Other investigations are underway in Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, and Lebanon where Riad Salamé is under house arrest.
Since then, the crisis in Lebanon has turned into a political and humanitarian disaster, with the population having almost no access to their savings and, more broadly, suffering daily the consequences of a collapsing banking system. In a particularly tense regional geopolitical context, it is urgent to question the responsibility of leading political figures and to act against the massive misappropriation of resources and the European financial institutions playing the role of facilitator.
While filing this new complaint, Sherpa draws the attention of the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office to the conditions under which Najib Mikati, current President of the Council of Ministers in Lebanon, has accumulated significant assets in France. The complaint also questions the origin of the funds that transited through the French banking system.
In 2021, the Pandora Papers investigation underlined the existence of numerous companies registered in tax havens for which Najib Mikati and his relatives are suspected to be beneficial owners. These investigations raise questions regarding the purpose of such complex financial arrangements, the real origin of the funds which enabled the investments and money flows in France and the role of French and European financial intermediaries which served to establish those operations.
This legal action calls into question the liability of all the actors involved, opening the way to the restitution of misappropriated assets. While the country is experiencing a collapse of historic dimension, the restitution of these funds to the deprived populations must remain at the center of the debates.
For more information: presse@asso-sherpa.org
