Report: Opening Corruption Files Could Trigger New Political Conflict

The course of political events in the past few days and the campaign launched against corruption, illegal employment in state institutions and financial spending over the last ten years could bring new political clashes to Lebanon’s political arena, media reports said Thursday.

Hizbullah parliamentary bloc MP Hassan Fadlallah, tasked with following on the file of corruption and government spending, has called for a probe in missing state funds between 1993 and 2013.

Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora (of al-Mustaqbal Movement), who was previously accused of spending $11 billion in extra budgetary spending during his premiership between 2005 and 2009, has called for a press conference on Friday to detail the “facts.”

Moreover, Speaker Nabih Berri has called for electing members of the Higher Council to try presidents and ministers, a move that al-Mustaqbal Movement circles and other political parties said aims at embarrassing mainly Mustaqbal officials in governance then.

Berri and Hizbullah circles say by raising these issues they have no ill intention to trigger political conflict, but more aim to “stop the financial and administrative collapse.”

Al-Mustabql sources however have questioned the “timing and the ends,” particularly the funds spent during the premiership of Siniora which he affirms were legal in their entirety and registered at the finance ministry.

Siniora said he will detail all the facts and figures during his press conference.

Unnamed parliamentary sources assured that opening financial records does not target any political party.

They said the files were raised currently simply because the Finance Ministry has completed study of the financial accounts between 1993 and 2017 and has raised the report to Berri. "The file is simply taking its legal course," they said.

Also on Wednesday, Head of the Budget and Finance parliamentary committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan, emphasized that the follow-up on the file of illegal hiring in the state’s administrations and institutions was serious and that the results will be colossal.

Lebanon’s government has imposed a freeze to hiring since the adoption of a wage scale law in 2017 that raised the wages of the public sector.

Kanaan said the committee has found that 15,200 public sector employees and contract workers were hired for “unexplained, superfluous positions.”

In October, the committee kicked off investigation after accusations that illegal state hiring had taken place in line with the May 2018 parliamentary elections as a method of buying votes.