European judicial delegations listened on Friday to a three-hour testimony from the caretaker Finance Minister, Youssef Khalil, in which he explained his work at the Central Bank of Lebanon. He promised to provide documents that include the legal texts related to the central bank. It is worth noting that Khalil held the position of head of financial operations at the central bank during the current governor Riad Salameh's term.
Additionally, the delegations received documents from Raja Salameh, the brother of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, and from Nada Makhlouf, an employee at the auditing firm Deloitte. A senior Lebanese judicial source told Reuters that "the caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil attended as a witness for a hearing in Beirut, today, with European investigators looking into whether Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh was involved in embezzling and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds over more than a decade."
The source, who requested anonymity, revealed that "the investigators questioned Khalil about his relationship with the central bank and with 'Fori Associates,' owned by Raja Salameh, which received commissions from bond sales." The same source reported that "Khalil informed the European investigators that he had never heard of Fori Associates before."
Furthermore, the European investigators concluded their mission in Lebanon after today's session, and it was not immediately clear whether they planned to return for further investigations. Following the testimony from the finance minister, the delegations were set to leave Beirut by the evening, having also received documents from Raja Salameh and Nada Makhlouf.
French prosecutors had previously informed Salameh that they "intend to bring charges of fraud and money laundering during a scheduled hearing in France on May 16." The European investigators arrived in Beirut last week and have since questioned Raja Salameh, the Central Bank's deputy governor Marianne Hayek, financial experts, and auditors.
