Beirut (Union)
The European Union and 7 other countries, including the United States of America, demanded that Lebanon undertake “critical structural reforms,” warning that the country’s economy will witness further deterioration unless the Lebanese authorities seize the opportunity to conclude an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. A joint statement issued by the ambassadors of the European Union, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan in Beirut, yesterday, stated that the Lebanese authorities had made only limited progress, a year after reaching an expert-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
In April 2022, the International Monetary Fund announced that it had reached a preliminary agreement with Lebanon on a $3 billion aid plan over 4 years.
The ambassadors clarified that “solutions to the economic crisis in Lebanon can only come from within Lebanon,” and they said: “The time has come for the Lebanese authorities to seize the opportunity offered by the agreement with the International Monetary Fund, otherwise the economy will deteriorate further, and bring more serious consequences to the economy.” The Lebanese people.
And last March, the International Monetary Fund warned that Lebanon was facing a “very dangerous moment,” considering that failure to implement urgent reforms would plunge the country into an “endless crisis.”
In a related development, European investigators in Beirut questioned, yesterday, the assistant governor of the Banque du Liban, Marianne Howayek, as part of investigations into the embezzlement and laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds over more than a decade.
Riad Salameh, the governor of the Banque du Liban, is being investigated, along with his brother Raja, in Lebanon and at least 5 European countries, on suspicion that they took more than $300 million from the Central Bank by collecting commissions as fees from bond buyers and then transferring the money to the “Fawry Associates” company, which owned by Raja. Marian Howayek, a longtime aide to the governor, was due to be questioned as a suspect, according to a European investigators’ timetable. A French court document says that up to 5 million euros from the central bank eventually went to Hoayek through accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg.
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