Mustaqbal Hits Back after FPM Criticizes Hout

Al-Mustaqbal Movement on Monday defended Middle East Airlines chairman Mohammed al-Hout, hours after the Free Patriotic Movement suggested that the national airline and its chief are involved in wrongdoing.

“The FPM launches false accusations against every successful national institution, like it is doing today with MEA,” Mustaqbal’s media affairs committee said in a statement.

“MEA’s staff know their institution better and its legal status within the Lebanese state is known to everyone and to those at the central bank in charge of overseeing it,” Mustaqbal added.

It also accused the FPM of launching unjust accusations to “cover up for its failures in the state’s institutions and sectors.”

The FPM’s anti-corruption committee had earlier accused Hout of holding a press conference that involved “a boring account of the state’s achievements” in order to “conceal MEA’s violations, its spending of money without any accountability, the lack of financial transparency and bribery through offering tourism tours and free tickets to a number of politicians, judges, security officials and journalists, in addition to financing celebrations, projects and contracting schemes.”

“The public prosecutions are asked to launch a financial and administrative probe and to lift bank secrecy off the accounts of the company, Mohammed al-Hout and his family members as well as off the accounts of the companies that are linked to him and his family members,” the FPM urged.