Report: Miqati meets potential candidates for replacing Salameh

Prime Minister Najib Miqati met in the past days with a number of potential candidates for replacing embattled Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, who is facing a host of lawsuits inside and outside Lebanon, a media report said on Friday.

The latest European measures against Salameh and some associates are what pushed Miqati to consider Salameh’s replacement, especially after Monaco “requested judicial cooperation from the Lebanese Justice Ministry in filed related to Miqati and members of his family” and after “the French threatened sanctions should the obstruction of investigation continue,” informed sources told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

“This pushed him to make a step back by loosening his protection of Salameh and, based on a French request, he met over the past days with some potential candidates for replacing the central bank governor, knowing that the candidate Samir Assaf’s rejection of this post has made him a main party in picking another candidate,” the sources added.