Salameh won't go to Paris questioning, plans to retire in UAE

Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has decided not to attend the May 16 interrogation session in Paris and is instead planning to retire in Sharjah, UAE, media reports have said.

Salameh fears that he might be detained or banned from traveling if he goes to France, the reports said. Instead, the governor and his legal team will argue that he has not been officially notified of the French interrogation request.

In remarks to al-Akhbar newspaper, Lebanese investigative judge Charbel Abou Samra confirmed that Salameh has not been notified of the session’s date.

“I have not found him anywhere and accordingly he has not been notified in the proper manner. In such a case, I would inform the summoning party that I failed to reach an accurate address of the person summoned,” Abou Samra told the daily.

A judicial official confirmed that Salameh will miss the hearing after Lebanese police failed to deliver a summons.

Lebanese "police officers visited the central bank four times last week to hand Riad Salameh an official summons" on behalf of the French authorities, the judicial official said.

"But they could not find him anywhere" and the summons was returned to Lebanon's judiciary, which was to notify French authorities, the official added.

A security officer at the central bank had given different reasons for Salameh's absence, telling police he had just left the building, was in a meeting or could not come to his workplace for "security reasons," the official revealed.

French judge Aude Buresi had told Salameh at the end of an interrogation session weeks ago in Beirut that he was officially asked to appear before her on May 16 in Paris, but Judge Abu Samra interfered and told Buresi that “an official notification cannot take place in this manner” and that the French judiciary “should ask the Lebanese judiciary to carry out the move, seeing as it is the only authority entitled to do so,” al-Akhbar said.

“Accordingly, Buresi asked Abou Samra to notify Salameh of the date for his appearance before her and he promised to do so immediately,” the daily added.

“But subsequently Salameh was not notified, which prompted him to keep the matter as a card that he would draw in the right moment, the thing that happened Sunday, when his legal team informed the French that he had not been notified of the session’s date,” the newspaper said.

And while Abou Samra has been accused of failing to carry out the notification in a legal manner, relevant parties told al-Akhbar that “the entire matter has been prepared in a calculated manner by the officials who back Salameh in all Lebanese authorities.”

“Buresi will be obliged to set a new date before the end of this month, but the information indicates that the governor will stay out of sight during this period, which would prevent him once again from being notified in an official manner,” the parties said.

Salameh maintained his innocence on March 17, which was the second and final day of questioning in Beirut before European investigators in a probe into his personal wealth.

Salameh, 72, is part of the Lebanese political class widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history.

He faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad, with investigators examining the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job.

The European investigators, including representatives of authorities in France, Germany and Luxembourg, are looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement.

Salameh "answered all the questions" and "pledged to provide all the documents tracing the sources of his wealth" as well as the addresses of people mentioned in the questioning sessions, a judicial official told AFP.

Members of the European delegation returned to Beirut in April and questioned Salameh's brother Raja and former assistant Marianne Hoayek. They also interrogated caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil on May 5.