Lebanon

A European judicial team pressed on with its corruption probe of Lebanon's embattled Central Bank governor on Thursday, questioning one of his aides and summoning his brother for another hearing next week, the Associated Press reported. The delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg is on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in an ongoing investigation of Gov. Riad Salameh and associates over several financial crimes and the laundering of some $330 million.

Lebanese authorities and a European judicial team on Tuesday agreed to exchange information about their separate corruption probes of Lebanon's Central Bank governor, officials said, the Associated Press reported. The announcement came during a visit by a European delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg — its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in an ongoing investigation of Governor Riad Salameh and associates over several financial crimes.

Lebanon’s first official devaluation in a quarter century fired up consumer prices in March, with food and beverage inflation exceeding an annual 350% as authorities struggle to contain the crash in the world’s worst performing currency this year, Bloomberg News reported. A decision in February to allow the pound to weaken by 90% has ended last year’s relative respite from galloping costs in Lebanon, whose economy cratered and forced the government to default on $30 billion of international debt in 2020.

The International Monetary Fund gave a grim assessment Thursday of Lebanon’s prospects for getting out of its deepening financial crisis, saying that without reforms, the country is headed for hyperinflation, the Associated Press reported. Since late 2019, tiny Lebanon has fallen into the worst economic crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by a political class that has ruled the country since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

Lebanon's central bank will begin selling unlimited amounts of U.S. dollars in a bid to halt the spiralling devaluation of the Lebanese pound, Governor Riad Salameh said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Salameh set a new rate for Sayrafa, the central bank's exchange platform, at 90,000 Lebanese pounds per dollar on Tuesday. He set the rate at 70,000 on March 1 but it has steadily crept up, trading at 83,500 on the platform on Monday. The Lebanese pound's parallel market rate weakened from roughly 121,000 to the U.S.

Lebanon’s Central Bank chief was again charged with corruption on Wednesday, this time after failing to show up for questioning before a European legal team visiting Beirut in a money-laundering probe linked to the governor, officials said, the Associated Press reported. According to the judicial officials, Gov. Riad Salameh, his brother Raja Salameh and an associate, Marianne Hoayek, were charged with corruption and ordered detained. Their assets were also frozen. The case is separate from other legal proceedings against Salameh underway in Lebanon.

Lebanon's embattled currency hit a new low Tuesday, trading at an unprecedented 100,000 Lebanese pounds to the dollar on the black market as the crisis-hit country's banks went back on strike, the Associated Press reported. The pound has kept sinking since Lebanon's financial meltdown erupted in 2019, following decades of rampant corruption and mismanagement by the country's political and financial elite. Three-quarters of Lebanon's population of over 6 million now lives in poverty and inflation is soaring.

Lebanon’s caretaker government Wednesday approved opening credit lines totaling $116 million to help fix its crippled state electricity grid, the Associated Press reported. The cash-strapped country for over two years has struggled with rampant power cuts that have crippled much of public life, worsening a broader economic crisis that has pulled over three-quarters of the country’s population into poverty. Today, households only receive about an hour of state electricity per day, with millions now relying on expensive private generator suppliers to power their homes.

A U.S. court of appeals determined this week that cases against Lebanese commercial banks can be tried outside Lebanon, according to a decision seen by Reuters, paving the way for more cases by depositors seeking to unlock their frozen funds, Reuters reported. The court decision, issued on Dec. 15 in a case brought by Lebanese depositors against leading lender Bank Audi, overturned a lower district court's decision that said Beirut courts had "exclusive jurisdiction" to try cases against Lebanese banks.

Lebanon’s parliament late Tuesday approved some amendments to a banking secrecy law that has been a key demand of the International Monetary Fund before it agrees to a bailout program amid the country’s economic meltdown, the Associated Press reported. Despite the changes, legal advocacy groups say the alterations to the law will likely not be enough to please the IMF because it restricts moves to lift banking secrecy provisions to judicial authorities.