The Salameh Papers: Full coverage here
Former Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh has been charged with financial crimes by a court in Beirut.
Mr Salameh is accused of theft of bank assets under article 638 of Lebanon’s penal code, a source in the country’s judiciary told The National.
“The public financial prosecutor, Judge Ali Ibrahim, pressed charges against the former governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Riad Salameh, for offences of embezzlement, theft of public funds, forgery and illicit enrichment,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.
Mr Salameh was detained for four days on Tuesday after a court hearing on the alleged embezzlement of at least $42 million from the Banque Du Liban.
It comes after his arrest by Public Prosecutor judge Jamal Hajjar on Tuesday after a judicial hearing in Beirut concerning an investigation into a fraud scheme in which tens of millions of dollars in public funds were allegedly embezzled from Lebanon's central bank. The alleged scam is known as the Optimum case.
Mr Hajjar ordered a four-day preventive detention. Mr Salameh, once seen as the guardian of Lebanon's financial sector, is now an international fugitive with frozen assets worth millions of dollars, an Interpol notice against him and several judicial cases both domestically and internationally. He is also widely blamed for Lebanon's financial collapse.
The case is now in the hands of an investigating judge to confirm the facts, gather evidence and submit it to the chamber of indictment before Mr Salameh stands trial.
The arrangement between Optimum Invest SA and the Banque Du Liban (BDL) is alleged to have allowed massive losses at the bank to be concealed between 2015 and 2018. The Lebanese judiciary also suspects that some of the money shuffled between accounts at the BDL was actually embezzled.
The Associated Press reported that the Lebanese judiciary is looking into embezzlement of $42 million.
A forensic audit of the transactions between the BDL and Optimum, conducted by consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, found that as much as $111 million may have been disbursed to undisclosed third parties.
It is unclear why the judiciary is investigating only part of the amount flagged by the audit.
This is a different case from the widely reported Forry Associates Ltd scandal, which involves another brokerage company under investigation domestically and internationally.
Optimum commissions are suspected to be a continuation of the Forry commission's scheme, another broker under investigation in Europe allegedly used by Mr Salameh to embezzle $330 million from the BDL between 2002 and 2015.
In Lebanon, the case has been stalled for years by political interventions despite the mounting international pressure.
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ETFs explained
Exhchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares, but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following their chosen indices, such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and the FTSE All World, plus a vast range of smaller exchanges and commodities, such as gold, silver, copper sugar, coffee and oil.
ETFs have zero upfront fees and annual charges as low as 0.07 per cent a year, which means you get to keep more of your returns, as actively managed funds can charge as much as 1.5 per cent a year.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five biggest providers BlackRock’s iShares range, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs, Deutsche Bank AWM X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
Another way to earn air miles
In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.
An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.
“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.
