A Lebanese judge – today, Thursday, issued an arrest warrant for former Minister of Economy Amin Salam for the crimes of embezzlement of public funds, forgery, unlawful enrichment and blackmail of insurance companies.
Bilal Halawi, the first investigative judge in BeirutThe former minister in the presence of his lawyer and agent of the cases of the Ministry of Justice (which represents the Lebanese state as a prosecutor in the file), on the claim of the Financial Public Prosecution against him and against others for crimes “embezzlement of public funds, forgery, illegal enrichment and extortion of insurance companies,” according to the official Lebanese National Media Agency.
The judge issued – at the end of the session – a “arrest warrant for the right of peace, which was transferred to his place of arrest with the Information Division in the General Directorate of Internal Security Forces,” according to the agency.
Next Monday, the judge set a date for the interrogation of 3 defendants in the same case, including the minister’s brother, who has been arrested for more than two months with a file of blackmailing the “Mashreq Insurance Company” and his file has become before the accused body in Beirut.
On June 16, the Acting Financial Deputy, the judge, had claimed the former Minister of Economy, his brother and advisor, Fadi Tamim, and the captain of accounting experts, Elie Abboud, on charges of embezzlement, waste of public money, forgery, forged use, blackmail, bribe, illegal enrichment and violation of laws.
Former arrest
It is noteworthy that the discriminatory public prosecutor Judge Jamal Al -Hajjar had ordered the arrest of the former Minister of Economy, after the latter interrogated before a division in the file of forgery and the conclusion of suspicious contracts and the disposal of funds other than the law.
A judicial source said – at the time – that suspicions are related to the period of assuming the peace of the Ministry of Economy between 2021 and 2025 in the government of the former Prime Minister Naguib Mikati.
He added that “this is the beginning of a long judicial investigation, and it will be transferred to the Financial Public Prosecution to study and claim investigations, and transform it to the investigating judge,” expected that the judicial path will be long, because the investigation will be completed to find out if what Other people were involved in internal or external parties in the contracts concluded by the minister and on the basis of them.
The source pointed out that the suspicions have been hovering over Salam from the time of his assumption of the ministry, as in 2023 he was sentenced to his consultant, Fadi Tamim, for a year to be convicted of “blackmailing insurance companies and benefiting from them financially.”
Many in Lebanon attribute the economic collapse to the mismanagement and corruption rampant in state institutions for decades at a time when the country is still suffering from the consequences of that collapse in terms of destruction in infrastructure and high levels of poverty.
The Lebanese President pledged Joseph Aoun Who was elected last January- and the new prime minister Nawaf SalamCombating corruption and implementing the reforms he requests The international community.
The Lebanese judiciary was arrested in September, the former governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon Riad Salama Before being claimed for several crimes, including “embezzlement of public funds and forgery.”