Riad Salameh's arrest is a chance to restore some faith in Lebanese institutions

A protest in Beirut against Riad Salameh, who has been accused for years of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from Lebanon's central bank. EPA

Riad Salameh was once seen as a hero and a financial wizard in Beirut's banking sector, credited with rehabilitating the Lebanese economy after the country's civil war ended in 1990. The 73-year-old was the governor of the Banque Du Liban (BDL), the country’s central bank, for three decades until his resignation last summer. But in the past few years, his legacy has been almost entirely rewritten.

Mr Salameh was arrested on Tuesday morning at his home in Beirut after a long, multinational effort to bring him to justice. He has been accused for years of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from BDL using dodgy brokerage firms, and an alleged scheme to falsify $8 billion worth of revenue for the bank. An embezzlement investigation began in Lebanon in 2021, and since then at least six European countries have opened their own probes into Mr Salameh’s alleged misdeeds. The US, UK and Canada have imposed sanctions on him.

Lebanese prosecutors charged Mr Salameh on Wednesday with theft of BDL assets. He is alleged to have stolen funds to the tune of $330 million to build a property empire around the world, as The National reported last year. If his case proceeds to a trial it will be an important moment for the Lebanese, who continue to reel from multiple crises, economic and political. It could also be a step in the direction of wider accountability for those corrupt elements in Lebanon’s elite class who have brought a country with once-strong institutions, particularly in finance, to ruin.

The amount of money that Mr Salameh is accused of defrauding contrasts with the daily financial battering Lebanese citizens contend with. Food inflation in Lebanon is crippling, having risen 33.5 per cent since last year. The situation is compounded by a presidential vacuum, and the knock-on effects of regional conflict and escalation between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel.

The Lebanese pound has lost 95 per cent of its value against the dollar since the onset of the economic crisis in 2019. Since then the country has fallen even further behind. The World Bank said the number of people in Lebanon living below the poverty line rose from 12 per cent in 2012 to 44 per cent in 2022, a situation the Bank labelled a "temporary bottom”.

Mr Salameh is expected to be held until a hearing next week, during which prosecutors must make a case for continuing to hold him. There is speculation in Lebanon that his arrest is a mere smokescreen to pre-empt the possibility of the country being put on the grey list of the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Last month Lebanon’s acting central bank governor, Wassim Mansouri, said that BDL was trying to prevent being placed under special scrutiny by the FATF.

But the arrest must be more than that. It must be a chance for Lebanon’s judiciary to show the country’s citizens that not all of its institutions are broken, and that their future cannot be stolen with impunity.