The legal team United for Lebanon filed a lawsuit against Governor of the Banque du Liban Riad Salameh, for various allegations, before Mount Lebanon First Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour.
The lawsuit cites the following allegations:
“Undermining the state’s financial position, embezzlement and investment of the job, abuse of authority and breach of job duty, violation of the general provisions of the Code of Money and Credit, violation of the provisions of Article 122 of the Code of Obligations and Contracts, violation of general provisions of the basic circular to banks No.134/2015.”
It details, “the unlawful procedures” that Salameh undertook over the years, and that “harmed Lebanon’s financial stability generally, and depositors specifically.”
One of the most significant of Salameh’s violations, as per the legal team, is purchasing large amounts of dollars from money changers at a high price, “in exchange for printing large amounts of the national currency to cover the exchange of millions of dollars…”
He did this “instead of intervening to maintain the exchange rate by injecting dollars into the market,” the team noted.
Salameh’s actions, according to Union for Lebanon, contributed to “raising the dollar exchange rate and increasing the national currency’s inflation,” which caused the Lebanese pound to lose more than 80% of its purchasing value.
The team declared that staying silent about the “clear and straightforward” violations of the central bank, the banks of Lebanon, and the Association of Banks in Lebanon is unacceptable.
Finally, it urges each victim of these violations to take their rights from “those who are robbing them.”
It calls on these victims to “immediately put an end to this contrived game of rapid fluctuation in the exchange rate, which is mostly paid by the general public in exchange for banks and money changers benefiting from black market trading.”
Notably, Riad Salameh will stand trial in the next few months over a lawsuit that another Lebanese activist group filed against him earlier this year.
