Judge Aoun appeals after Mansour orders Raja Salameh's release

Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour on Thursday ordered the release of Raja Salameh on a bail of LBP 500 billion, but Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun appealed against the decision and demanded that he be kept in custody.

Salameh for his part filed an appeal demanding that the bail amount be slashed.

According to MTV, the final say belongs to the accusatory body, which can either accept and ratify Aoun’s appeal or reject it and approve Salameh’s release. It also has the jurisdiction to lower or increase the bail amount.

Raja, a businessman who is the brother of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, has been under arrest since March 17 over financial corruption charges.

The Salameh brothers' assets have been frozen in Lebanon under an order from Judge Aoun in a money laundering case. Aoun says that Riad Salameh had used his brother to buy real-estate in France worth nearly $12 million.

There have also been reports that a brokerage firm, Forry Associates Ltd., owned by Raja Salameh, was hired by the central bank to handle government bond sales in which the firm received $330 million in commissions. The governor, who has denied all charges of corruption, calling them politicized, said last November that "not a single penny of public money" was used to pay Forry Associates Ltd.

Riad Salameh, who has not been arrested, has steered Lebanese finances since 1993, through post-war recovery and bouts of unrest. He was once praised as the guardian of Lebanon's financial stability but has drawn increasing scrutiny since the financial meltdown started in 2019. He is also being investigated in several European nations, including Switzerland and France, for potential money laundering and embezzlement.