The "Strong Lebanon" bloc, in a statement issued following a meeting of its members chaired by MP Gebran Bassil, warned against the ongoing attempts to use the judiciary to dilute the investigation into financial crimes. It considered that "the Public Prosecution is the responsible authority for conducting this investigation, similar to what occurred in the investigation involving former Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, and any evasion of these procedures places the responsibility for inaction and complicity in the crime on the evader."
The bloc called on the Central Bank to "voluntarily provide all the data requested in the initial report issued by Alvarez & Marsal regarding forensic auditing, which the accused governor had refrained from supplying to the firm, and to continue the forensic audit in order to produce a final report upon which further investigations can be based and forensic auditing in the relevant institutions and administrations can be conducted."
The bloc considered that "the election of the presidency is a sovereign entitlement under the responsibility of the Parliament, and the bloc operates from this principle in its multifaceted dialogue with all parliamentary blocs." Regarding the French initiative, the bloc informed the presidential envoy Le Drian of its position, which can be summarized as stating that any dialogue concerning the presidency among Lebanese parties should be limited to a defined agenda based on the presidential program (presidential priorities), specifications of the president and their name, and a very limited time frame that concludes either with the election of the agreed-upon candidate or with the continuation of consecutive sessions called by the Speaker of the House until a president is elected.
