Beirut, Lebanon – Lebanon’s central bank governor, Riad Salameh, is expected to miss an upcoming hearing in a French probe after Lebanese police had failed to deliver a summons, a judicial official said Monday.
Salameh, 72, has been the target of a series of judicial investigations both at home and abroad on allegations including fraud, money laundering and illicit enrichment.
European investigators looking into the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job had scheduled a hearing in Paris for Tuesday.
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 told AFP.
“But they could not find him anywhere” and the summons was returned to Lebanon’s judiciary, which was to notify French authorities, the official said.
The official, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the press, said Salameh will likely be absent from the hearing in Paris given the failure to deliver the summons.
In March 2022, France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth 120 million euros ($130 million) in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh’s wealth.
This year, European investigators have questioned Salameh in Beirut, also hearing from a Lebanese minister, Salameh’s brother Raja, and central bank audit firms.
A visiting French judge had told Salameh in March that he was expected to appear in Paris, but a Lebanese judge attending the session said any summons needed to adhere to official procedures.
And last month, a Lebanese judge lifted a travel ban imposed on the embattled central bank chief ahead of the planned hearing abroad.
“He will have no excuse not to go to France,” a judicial official told AFP at the time.
The first judicial source said on Monday 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”.
Salameh has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
He is part of a political class widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in Lebanon in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history.
In February, Lebanon charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of its own investigations.
The domestic probe was opened following a request for assistance from Switzerland’s public prosecutor looking into more than $300 million in fund movements by the Salameh and his brother.