The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in discussions of allegations of money laundering by high government officials and their family members. Yet, even if the wildest accusations being tossed around are true, they would pale in comparison to the shenanigans of two prominent Lebanese bankers – both now under multiple indictments for money laundering to aid Hezbollah’s extra-legal activities.
Certain Lebanese bankers have long been suspected of corruption on a grand scale, and in 2011 the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) was accused by the Obama Administration of laundering money for an international cocaine ring with ties to Hezbollah.
It was reported that the bank and Hezbollah used an intricate global money laundering apparatus that enabled moving huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system. In the wake of LCB’s collapse, another Lebanese bank, of Société Générale Banque au Liban (SGBL), agreed to buy LCB’s assets and clean up its operations.
Despite promises by SGBL CEO Antoun Sehnaoui, U.S. Treasury official Daniel Glaser wondered whether the Bank of Lebanon (BDL) and its CEO, Riad Salameh, might use the acquisition of LCB “as a launching pad” for a new round of Hezbollah-linked money laundering.
Glaser, it now appears, was right to worry. Salameh and Sehnaoui, both facing ruin, are the likely chief culprits in what may become a “high-tech lynching” of a prominent Lebanese anti-corruption campaigner.
Salameh and Sehnaoui
After working for two decades for Merrill Lynch, Riad Salameh was appointed as Governor of the Bank of Lebanon.
His 30-year term of service, during which he was appointed to the board of governors of the International Monetary Fund, marks the longest in the world, and he might still be serving but for a 2019 bank scandal that opened the door to exposing the depth of his corruption.
After heading up a Ponzi scheme - the largest in world history - that led to a near-total collapse of the Lebanese currency, Salameh is now ranked as “the world’s worst central banker." Today, Salameh (along with his brother Raja) is facing charges in Lebanon, Switzerland, France, and several other countries of money laundering, embezzlement, corruption, and illicit enrichment. The Lebanese government, however, has refused to extradite him to face most of the charges.
In 2007, at the age of 35, Antoun Sehnaoui was thrust into the job of CEO of the SGBL Group, parent company of Société Générale Banque au Liban. Four years later his bank acquired the assets of the shamed LCB, and shortly afterward SGBL expanded operations in the Middle East and Europe – including the acquisition of Banque Richelieu.
If not earlier, the lives of these two men – Salameh and the younger Sehnaoui – were intertwined during the LCB scandal, and likely ever since.
And, as it appears, it was not always for good.
The lawyers smell a rat
A year after the Lebanese pound collapsed, Mouttahidoun, an association of lawyers fighting corruption, filed a lawsuit charging Riad Salameh, SGBL and Antoun Sehnaoui, the Mecattaf money transfer company, and three other Lebanese money exchangers with “money laundering crimes resulting from currency trading operations with the intent of exposure to the national currency.”
Mouttahidoun founder Rami Ollaik said his collective had found that the money BDL injected into the Lebanese economy was being diverted, in collusion with Salameh’s bank, “in the hands of connected money exchangers and big banks, including SGBL.” Ordinary Lebanese citizens could not move their funds out of the collapsing economy,
Investigating Mount Lebanon prosecutor Ghada Aoun found that SGBL allegedly transferred via Mecattaf US$1.017 billion in 2019 and 2020, with US $17 million going to Sehnaoui, “with the facilitation of ... Riad Salameh.”
After experts could not identify the source of US$4.3 billion transferred abroad by Mecattaf between 2015 and 2019, Aoun charged Salameh with money laundering, corruption, and abuse of power and Mecattaf, SGBL, and Sehnaoui with money laundering. In effect, Salameh stashed billions in stolen money in Sehnaoui’s bank.
The trail leads to Europe
But when Salameh’s accounts in Europe were frozen in 2022, the funds included 46 million euros held in the Monaco branch of Banque Richelieu – which Sehnaoui’s bank controls. Another person who had been charged in the Mecattaf case, Cypriot attorney Marianne Howayek, was Salameh’s executive assistant.
Howayek claimed that an expensive apartment she bought in Paris and nearly 2 million euros in cash had come from her father, but the evidence showed that the money had originated in Inter Jura CY Trust Ltd., a Cyprus Trust Fund overseen by Cypriot attorney Kypros Chrysostomides. Jura just happened to have served as legal advisor for Cypriot banks owned by one Maurice Sehnaoui – Antoun’s uncle.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that Chrysostomides was “among a large group of Cypriot lawyers who wittingly or unwittingly enable powerful people to commit crimes and then hide behind a law firm.” Yet Sehnaoui chose Inter Jura to provide fiduciary services to his Ezekiel Films Limited, which curiously was incorporated just before Mecattaf began transferring the aforementioned US$4.3 billion.
Hmmm...
And on to Africa
With criminal cases abounding, and even an American civil case (related to BCL), Sehnaoui’s Banque Richelieu earlier this year entered into a partnership with BGFI Bank DRC to offer European banking services to Congolese clients.
A legitimate banker would be unlikely to get into business with BGFI, as an investigation by the anti-corruption NGO Sentry (co-founded by George Clooney) had demonstrated that DRC President Kabila’s family had used the (at least partly) family-owned bank to launder their illicit gains.
Worse, BGFI has allegedly been hosting accounts belonging to funders of Hezbollah, notably Kassim Tajideen, whom the U.S. State Department deemed as “an important financial contributor” who has sent tens of millions of dollars to Hezbollah.
Tajideen and his brothers, through their company Tajco Ltd., had used the Lebanese Canadian Bank, which SGBL bought in 2011, to launder money and fund Hezbollah’s nefarious activities.
Cornered men now seek revenge
Shortly after speaking about the issue of corruption in Lebanon at a European Parliament conference on “fighting terrorism,” Lebanese-born publisher and anti-corruption activist Omar Harfouch was attacked in Beirut by some media, Hezbollah, and Lebanese government authorities who accused him of “contacting an enemy state (Israel).” [Eighteen years earlier he had, likely inadvertently, been on a flight that included an Israeli journalist.]
Whipped up by newspaper attacks, the military justice system opened proceedings against Harfouch on charges of “treason,” then issued an arrest warrant on direct orders from Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Yet Harfouch’s only “real crime” was uncovering corruption that threatened Hezbollah’s major avenues for laundering its ill-gotten gains.
Mikati had been prosecuted for money laundering in several European countries based on documents Harfouch had provided to the Monaco judiciary. Harfouch had also provided documents that led to a freeze on tens of millions of dollars held by Banque Richelieu in Monaco. That in turn led to further investigations that enabled France, Germany, and Luxembourg to confiscate 120 million euros from Salameh.
As of June, investigating judge Samaranda Nassar, an ally of Hezbollah, had issued an arrest warrant for Harfouch without following Lebanon’s established legal principles.
With enemies like Mikati, Salameh, Sehnaoui, and Hezbollah, Harfouch clearly appears to be “the man to be killed” – or condemned as a criminal by what amounts to a criminal money laundering cartel.