Aides to Lebanon's central bank chief are questioned by European judges

 



The second hearing between a European legal delegation and Marianne Hoayek, the assistant to the governor of the central bank of Lebanon, was concluded on Friday.

In connection with a money laundering investigation concerning the European bank accounts of the governor Riad Salameh and his brother Raja Salameh, Hoayek is being questioned as a suspect.

The assistant to Marwan Kheireddine, the head of Al-Mawarid Bank, Madeleine Shaheen was also questioned by the EU judicial mission.

An investigator from Luxembourg as well as a public prosecutor from Munich are part of the team, which is headed by a French judge named Aude Buresi.

"The delegation asked Hoayek about a hundred questions, and she answered all of them," a legal source told Arab News.

Hoayek, who didn't have a lawyer present, was questioned about her involvement in the financial management of the Banque du Liban as well as her function as Salameh's executive adviser from April 2020.

Both of the two sessions were attended by Judge Helena Iskandar, head of the Cases Authority at the Ministry of Justice, who is defending the Lebanese state in its claim against Salameh, as well as Charbel Abu Samra, the first investigating judge in Beirut who is in charge of carrying out European authorizations.

Kheireddine has been under interrogation by Judge Buresi in France for some weeks now about allegations of "associating with a criminal gang with the aim of embezzling public funds, breach of trust, and corruption of a public official."

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