Nabatieh: MP Ibrahim Kanaan confirmed that the draft law on the financial gap and deposit recovery is still under negotiation between the government and the Central Bank of Lebanon, considering that its true content will be revealed once it is referred to Parliament.

According to National News Agency – Lebanon, Kanaan emphasized that “the Finance and Budget Committee refuses to classify deposits as eligible or ineligible,” reminding that the committee managed to maintain deposits, even on paper, since 2019, and objected to the write-off of deposits in government plans that were not recovery plans.

Kanaan considered that “the minimum of $100,000 should be guaranteed, and a project can be put in place to recover deposits using a portion of the state’s revenues, the assets of the Central Bank of Lebanon, the state’s debt, and the reserves at the Central Bank of Lebanon, which have reached $12 billion, and are essentially deducted from the deposits of the Lebanese.”

He added, “An acceptable figure can then be reached after filtering the deposits between legitimate and illegitimate resulting from money laundering, smuggling, influence peddling, and/or illicit enrichment, or from fallen regimes in the region. As for the legitimate and legal deposits of the Lebanese, they will not be touched.”

“Accountability is required because those who buried the financial accounts since 1993, which were revealed through a detailed parliamentary audit over several years, the results of which were acknowledged by the Ministry of Finance at $27 billion and referred to the financial judiciary, and those who squandered and benefited from subsidy, are not ghosts,” Kanaan underlined.

“Had the executive and judicial authority heeded our calls and recommendations since 2013, Lebanon would not have collapsed,” the MP underlined.

“We reiterate our demands for the government to audit banks’ assets in Lebanon and abroad,” Kanaan reaffirmed, questioning the reasons for the delay to-date and stressing once again that any attempt to write off deposits will not be accepted today, after having previously rejected it.