The race began to intensify with the arrival of a European judicial delegation from France, Germany and Luxembourg to Beirut today to investigate managers and possibly bank owners and employees on charges of corruption and financial transfers from Lebanese banks abroad between the European and Lebanese judiciary, in conjunction with a new expected confusion in the black market with today’s circulation of a bank Lebanon regarding trading and the beneficiary of exchange operations, with the continuation of paying money to the electricity ships anchored off the Lebanese shores, without agreeing on an electricity loan that needs a cabinet, which the ministers of the Aounist bloc still oppose to its history.
This position is in addition to a new point of divergence with Hezbollah, which is the separation from it on the issue of the white paper, as the strong Lebanon bloc may name a figure for whom it will vote for the presidency of the republic.
According to the information, Hezbollah will build on what is required, with an emphasis on a change in Hezbollah’s agenda, in terms of preparing for developments that the region may witness in terms of possible confrontations between the “axis of resistance” to which Hezbollah belongs, and Israel and the axis to which it belongs headed by the United States with Vibrations worldwide.
And these serious repercussions, as the electricity supply became zero hours, in most regions, an international report revealed that Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, was ranked in the 240th degree, i.e. only two degrees before the last, among the cities with the worst living conditions, in terms of cost, and the decline in purchasing power and the cost of housing, with Non-stop collapses in the national currency exchange rate.
In the presidential sphere, informed political sources explained to Al-Liwaa that the upcoming week opens with moving the presidential file through a call for the election session and meetings between a number of parliamentary blocs to coordinate positions, in addition to showing pictures related to the names of the presidential nomination club intervention by some forces, especially the Free Patriotic Movement. The sources pointed out that this movement does not necessarily result in a result, but is better than the stalemate, stressing that there is no actual initiative to transfer the issue of the presidency to the final solution, provided that it is necessary to wait for what the Speaker of the House of Representatives may present regarding the opposition’s call for open election sessions.
Lebanese or European judiciary
With the return of Lebanon’s judges, or at least some of them, to resume work in the palaces of justice, public opinion is divided at home, regarding the role that will be entrusted to the European investigation mission, under the title of the survey, amid inconsistent information regarding the parties that will be requested to be heard, and whether it is among them. Riad Salameh, Governor of the Banque du Liban, or not.
At this time, the criminal justice investigations are expanding by fighting what has been termed the fight once morest corruption, starting with the Car Registration Authority, to the real estate departments, and all the way to the ministries of works, health, and education, once morest the backdrop of creating a file that allows disciplinary measures to be taken once morest employees in the public sector, within the framework of consistency with the requirements of The International Monetary Fund regarding cooperation and the conclusion of the loan agreement that was promised to Lebanon a year or more ago, and nothing was achieved from it.
European corruption investigation
On the other hand, a judicial delegation from France, Germany and Luxembourg arrives today in Lebanon to interrogate 30 financial and banking figures, reportedly including the Governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh.
The information indicated that the mission of the European delegations will start next Monday, and it will be divided into several stages. In a first stage limited to five days, starting Monday and ending Friday, regarding 15 people will be subject to investigation, not including Riad Salameh, and it will include senior officials in the Central Bank and managers of Lebanese banks. The Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, assigned the head of the Central Criminal Investigation Department, Colonel Nicolas Saad, with the task of notifying the persons to be interrogated of the dates of the hearings.
To this end, Oweidat met in his office, yesterday followingnoon, with two delegations from the French and German embassies, and they discussed arrangements for the arrival of judicial delegations and defining the mechanism for cooperation between the two parties. and the procedures that will accompany it.
Oweidat said that the mission of the European judicial delegation, which will arrive in Lebanon next Monday, is to interrogate people who were previously interrogated by the Lebanese judiciary as witnesses, with the exception of one person who will be interrogated as a suspect. This delegation wants to explore where the judicial letters of attorney in the file handled by Judge Ziyad Abu Haidar, whose investigation was halted due to the response requests that were submitted once morest him.
He pointed out that the delegation’s visit may be followed by other visits, but not necessarily in a consecutive manner, but as needed.
He revealed that the persons required to be interrogated number 15, not including the Governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh.
He pointed out that the files to be investigated by the judicial delegation fall under the chapter of corruption, which is the same file in the Appeal Public Prosecution Office, which has been suspended for some time for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
It was learned that the concerned banks number five, and are related to correspondent banks, regarding the movement of money transfers, in addition to employees of the suspected banks, including a person from the Aoun family.
In the midst of this, the presidential horizon is still blocked internally and externally, despite the ongoing movement of more than one bloc and parliamentary group. This negative reality was confirmed by the Director General of Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, who said Saturday in a meeting at Al-Makassed Hospital, in response to a question regarding possible mediation in the presidential file: “I do not miss a suicide bomber on any file… The local and international circumstances do not help at the moment.”
But what is new is what was announced by the member of the strong Lebanon bloc, Asaad Dergham: We have a meeting on Tuesday that will resolve the issue of naming and the consensual person that we may vote for in the next session.
Therefore, it does not seem that the presidential election will witness any significant development in the upcoming electoral session this week, with the exception of the announcement by the member of the strong Lebanon bloc, Asaad Dergham, to break out of the white paper stereotype, as he said in a televised interview: We have a meeting on Tuesday that will resolve the issue of naming and the consensual person we may vote for in next session. While the movement of independent and change-making representatives is still unable to come to an agreement on a specific name to agree upon.
And a number of independent deputies who conduct visits and meetings with political references confirm that they have not agreed on any candidate yet, and that the positions are still the same divergent as a result of the existing political divisions, and that what is being worked on lies in trying to agree on a common name between most forces and blocs. The Nepalese are on both sides of the division and on the program and plan of action of the future president, which adopts the main title of salvation, even if the opposition forces abandon the candidacy of Michel Moawad if the name of the president and his program are agreed upon.
And on the side of the “deputies of change”, their sources confirm that matters with this group are still ranging from disagreement over one name. Rather, there is a basket of three or four names that are being discussed, (Ziyad Baroud, Salah Hanin, Nassif Hitti, and Issam Khalifa) and several meetings were held to deliberate There are options, but no one has made a final decision or pushed towards adopting a specific option. So everything remains as it is until further notice.
Representative Asaad Dergham’s announcement of the strong Lebanon bloc’s approach to nominate its candidate for the presidential elections in a meeting that the bloc will hold tomorrow, Tuesday, instead of voting with a white paper, as he did during the past ten election sessions, led to great dissatisfaction with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Representative Gebran Bassil. And within the bloc, because the latter was planning to announce this approach himself immediately following the bloc’s meeting, and not as happened by Representative Dhargham, given that the bloc’s adoption of this option is considered a shift in its position on the presidential elections, which may lead to moving the stalemate in the file of the presidential elections, and re-mixing The papers were renewed, and it would have been more useful not to reveal this matter prematurely.
Sources close to the bloc revealed that the confusion and resentment that prevails among the members of the bloc goes beyond what MP Dergham announced regarding the issue of the presidential elections, to Basil’s unilateral actions, and his attempt to limit everything related to the presidential elections to his person, as if the rest of the members are false witnesses who have no right to indulge in the debate. Or to find out their opinions, especially regarding what is reported regarding a trend to nominate a person from outside the bloc, and not from within it, which led to some members hinting at not being committed to the decision to vote for the candidate who will be announced by the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, and to vote, either with a white paper, or For one of the candidates whose names are put forward by the opposition, in order to express their rejection of this method of elimination, for all those qualified to run for candidacy from within the bloc, especially Representative Ibrahim Kanaan, who considers what is happening, an open attempt to exclude him from running for the presidential elections in particular, because he constitutes a competitor, with whom Basil is not comfortable. Therefore, by nominating a candidate from outside the bloc, he seeks to exclude him from running in the name of the bloc.
With regard to Hezbollah’s position on the tendency of the strong Lebanon bloc to nominate a presidential candidate, and to leave the coalition to vote with the white paper, the sources indicated that if the bloc votes for whoever it chooses, this means a decrease in the number of white papers for the party and its allies, and of course, this will increase the tension in the relations between the two parties towards The worst, but of course the transformation required to elect a new president of the republic will not happen, because the key to controlling the election session remains in the hands of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and not in the hands of Basil or anyone else.
