BEIRUT,  (Reuters) – Lebanon’s central bank governor and his brother are suing the state over what they say were “grave mistakes” made by a public prosecutor in his investigation of whether they had embezzled public funds, according to a copy of the lawsuit. Their claim has led to concerns that the public probe into the two brothers could stall, after similar lawsuits paralysed an investigation into the devastating 2020 explosion at Beirut’s port. Public prosecutor Jean Tannous has been investigating allegations of embezzlement and other misconduct at the central bank involving $300 million in gains made by a company owned by Raja Salameh, brother of Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

The brothers have denied the accusations. This week, they filed a suit against the Lebanese state accusing Tannous of committing “grave mistakes” through the course of his probe, according to a copy of the lawsuit seen by Reuters on Friday. Tannous declined a Reuters request for comment while Riad Salameh did not immediately respond to a similar request. The document alleges that Tannous is biased and lacks the legal authority to access bank information, arguing that only the central bank’s special investigation commission has that prerogative.

by microsoft.com — Microsoft successfully detected and disabled attack activity abusing OneDrive by a previously undocumented Lebanon-based activity group Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) tracks as POLONIUM. The associated indicators and tactics were used by the OneDrive team to improve detection of attack activity and disable offending actor accounts. To further address this abuse, Microsoft has suspended more than 20 malicious OneDrive applications created by POLONIUM actors, notified affected organizations, and deployed a series of security intelligence updates that will quarantine tools developed by POLONIUM operators. Our goal with this blog is to help deter future activity by exposing and sharing the POLONIUM tactics with the community at large.

MSTIC assesses with high confidence that POLONIUM represents an operational group based in Lebanon. We also assess with moderate confidence that the observed activity was coordinated with other actors affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), based primarily on victim overlap and commonality of tools and techniques. Such collaboration or direction from Tehran would align with a string of revelations since late 2020 that the Government of Iran is using third parties to carry out cyber operations on their behalf, likely to enhance Iran’s plausible deniability.

By Matt Unicomb in Sydney — middleeasteye.net — In some of Sydney’s suburbs, streets are lined with Arab grocery stores, halal butchers and kebab shops, run mostly by Lebanese immigrants and their descendants. The thriving community, which is one of the most deep-rooted in the country, gives a distinctively Lebanese flavour, reminding locals of back home. Many among Australia’s Lebanese community trace their families’ arrival back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the number of Lebanese-born residents tripled to 33,424. By 2016, the year of Australia’s most recent census, there were 76,450 Lebanese-born people in Australia.

Lebanon’s civil war, which began in 1975, prompted the Australian authorities to loosen visa requirements for the family members of the Lebanese community already in Australia, which led to the third and largest wave of Lebanese immigration. Today, more than 230,880 people in the country identify as Lebanese Australians, a cohort that includes some of Australia’s best-known authors, artists, athletes, politicians and scientists. “We are so different, and our experiences are so different,” says Michael Mohammed Ahmad, a writer, who lives in Sydney. “But there’s still a sense of familiarity when we talk to one another.”

A diverse community

The range of religions represented is as diverse as in Lebanon itself, with both Sunni and Shia Muslims making up around 40 percent of the community, and Christian denominations like Protestants, Greek Orthodox, Maronites and Melkites accounting for around 48 percent. Compared to other prominent minorities, such as Afghan or Sudanese, Australia’s Lebanese community is well established. The 2016 census showed that 83 percent of Lebanese-born people in Australia arrived before 2007, significantly higher than the 61 percent of the population born overseas. Around 70 percent of the Lebanese community lives in New South Wales, Australia’s most populated state.

Beirut –Youssef Diab  — aawsat.com — Lebanon’s opposition deputies have expressed fears of a “new deal” between the Shiite duo – represented by Amal and Hezbollah – and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), which would grant them the necessary majority to tailor the future government and elect a new president of the republic in October. Those fears are actually based on Tuesday’s parliamentary session, which saw the re-election of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri for a seventh consecutive term and the election of FPM MP Elias Bou Saab as deputy speaker, within the framework of an undeclared agreement between the Shiite duo and the FPM, as described by some lawmakers.

The opposition deputies explained that Berri and Bou Saab have both received 65 parliamentary votes, as a result of a prior agreement between the two blocs. The head of the FPM, MP Gebran Bassil, had denied this claim, asserting that his bloc had cast a blank vote in the speaker’s election. In this regard, the head of the National Liberal Party, MP Camille Chamoun, justified this agreement by “the tripartite alliance’s fear of the arrival of a large and effective force to the Parliament.” In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said: “The people, who gave us their confidence, want actions and a clear methodology to achieve their interests, not the interests of politicians.” He called on the forces of change to reach out to the opposition deputies from the traditional political blocs, and to coordinate fully in order “to prevent the other side from consolidating its power.”

سجعان قزي

@AzziSejean

هل أطاحَت نتائجُ جلسةِ 31 أيّار نتائجَ انتخاباتِ 15 أيّار؟ الكُتلُ النيابيّةُ السياديّةُ/التغييريّةُ يُعزّي بعضُها بعضًا بأنَّ الرئيسَ نبيه برّي فاز لأوّلِ مرةٍّ بأكثريّةِ النِصفِ زائدًا واحدًا. لكنَّ الجميعَ تناسَوا أنَّ عددَ الأصواتِ يَدومُ أربعَ ساعاتٍ بينما فوزُه يَدومُ أربعَ سنوات. القوى التي تُقدِّرُ ذاتَها أكثريّةً سياديّةً فَشِلت في تحقيقِ اختراقٍ في نيابةِ رئاسةِ المجلس وغيرِها، فيما الشعبُ انتخَبها لتَتّحِدَ وتَنتصر. والنوّابُ أدْعياءُ التغييرِ فوّتوا في أوّلِ جلسةِ نيابيّةٍ يَحضُرونَها فرصةَ أن يكونوا كُتلةً موحَّدةً ووازنةً رغمَ أصواتِهم الثلاثةَ عشرَ وتَسبّبوا بفوزِ الفريقِ الذي اتّهموه بالاعتداءِ عليهم أثناءَ التظاهرات! و”الوسطيّون” عَوّموا قوى 8 آذار، ثم عادوا في اليومِ التالي يُعطون دروسًا في الوِحدة للسياديّين!

إنَّ الطرحَ السياديَّ والتغييريَّ لا يَكفي ليكونَ الطارحُ قوّةً سياديّةً وتغييريّة. إنَّ النضالَ الفِعليَّ بكلِّ الوسائلِ المتاحَةِ قانونيًّا أو وطنيًّا من أجلِ السيادةِ والتغييرِ هو معيارُ الانتماءِ إلى الفريقِ السياديِّ والتغييريِّ. حتى الآن نَسمَعُ كلامًا في الإعلامِ عن السيادةِ والتغيير، ولا نرى نضالًا جِدّيًا من أجلِ تحقيقِهما. حين بَلغ هنيبعل التاسعةَ من العمرِ اصْطحَبه والدُه، هَمِلْكار، إلى مَعبدِ مِلْكارت الفينيقيِّ في قَرطاجة ليُقسِمَ اليمينَ “المقدَّسَ” على “ألّا يكونَ يومًا صديقًا للرومان”. ظلَّ هذا القسمُ وعدًا إلى أن أعلنَ هنيبعل الحربَ على روما من سنةِ 214 ق.م حتّى وفاتِه نحو سنةِ 183 ق.م.

WASHINGTON (AP) — AAMER MADHANI and ELLEN KNICKMEYER —  President Joe Biden is leaning towards making a visit to Saudi Arabia — a trip that would likely bring him face-to-face with the Saudi crown prince he once shunned as a killer. The White House is weighing a visit to Saudi Arabia that would also include a meeting of the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) as well as Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, according to a person familiar with White House planning. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the yet-to-be finalized plans. It comes at a moment when overriding U.S. strategic interests in oil and security have pushed the administration to rethink the arms-length stance that Biden pledged to take with the Saudis as a candidate for the White House.

Any meeting between Biden and de facto Saudi ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a Biden visit to the Middle East could offer hope of some relief for U.S. gasoline consumers, who are wincing as a squeaky-tight global oil supply drives up prices. Biden would be expected to meet with Prince Mohammed, who is often referred to by his initials, MBS — if the Saudi visit happens, according to the person familiar with the deliberations. Such a meeting could also ease one of the most fraught and uncertain periods in a partnership between Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and the United States, the world’s top economic and military power, that has stood for more than three-quarters of a century. But it also risks a public humbling for the U.S. leader, who in 2019 pledged to make a “pariah” of the Saudi royal family over the 2018 killing and dismemberment of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a newspaper critic of many of the brutal ways that Prince Mohammed operates.

by Source Naharnet — The World Bank has extended its Country Partnership Framework (CPF) with Lebanon by one additional year “to advance urgently needed socioeconomic recovery programs targeting the poor and most vulnerable and support urgently needed macroeconomic and structural reforms.” In a statement, the world Bank said it has restructured and reprogramed its portfolio […]

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former managing editor at the Daily Star. — foreignpolicy — Lebanon has become a failed state and a global source of narcotics, terrorism, and, once again, a growing number of refugees. Washington, stung by its failure to spread democracy in the Middle East and tiptoeing around everything connected to Iran, has limited its Lebanon policy to crisis management. But Lebanon’s parliamentary elections on May 15 saw the first stirrings of a potential coalition capable of checking—and perhaps eventually dislodging—Hezbollah and its iron grip over the country. Hezbollah and its allies lost their parliamentary majority and now face the biggest opposition since 2009—a loose coalition of the Lebanese Forces party and various independents with as many as 60 out of a total 128 seats. Although the reconstituted legislature reelected a Hezbollah ally, Amal party leader Nabih Berri, as speaker of parliament on Tuesday, it did so with only the slimmest of majorities—65 out 128 votes, compared to 98 in 2018. Berri’s tally would not have been possible without votes controlled by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who played kingmaker. Free Patriotic Movement leader Elias Bou Saab, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, also won 65 votes for deputy speaker. But his contender, independent Ghassan Skaf, picked up 60 votes, showing the size of a potential opposition coalition. At the core of this bloc is the Lebanese Forces, a former Christian militia-turned-political party whose 20 seats put it ahead of Hezbollah’s 13.

While Jumblatt has been loosely aligned with Hezbollah in recent years, the right kind of pressure and incentives could still throw a wrench into Hezbollah’s plans to control the Lebanese government. That’s because Lebanon’s economic collapse is giving Hezbollah’s opponents a new sense of urgency—even after losing the election. The anti-Hezbollah bloc has called on the Shiite party’s extraconstitutional militia, roughly 30,000 fighters closely allied with Iran, to disband—just as the Lebanese Forces did when it surrendered its arms at the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1991. Since disbanding its military wing, the Lebanese Forces have remained a highly organized and potent political movement, demonstrating that a political party without a militia attached can succeed in Lebanese politics.

source: nna-leb.gov — وطنية – أعلن النائب فريد هيكل الخازن، في تصريح بعد انتخاب رئيس المجلس النيابي “أن لا اكثرية ولا أقلية في لبنان انما ذلك يختلف بحسب الظرف والشخص”. وتمنى الخازن التوفيق للجميع لافتا الى انه” لم ينتخب الرئيس نبيه بري رئيسا للمجلس النيابي بل صوت للوزير الياس بوصعب نائبا لرئيس المجلس”. وأكد الخازن ان الاصطفافات لا […]

By Sunniva Rose — The National.ae. — Lebanon’s 128 MPs are scheduled to attend the first Parliament session since their May 15 election on Tuesday. For the first time in years, the streets surrounding Parliament will be, at least in part, cleared of large cement blocks that were erected during nationwide protests in 2019. Legislators will be asked to elect a president, a deputy president, two secretaries and three commissioners. Veteran Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, 84, is widely expected to be re-elected for the seventh time. But analysts believe the he will probably not win as easily as before.

Representatives of Lebanon’s traditional sectarian political class, including former warlords such as Mr Berri, have become highly unpopular due to the country’s economic meltdown. Mr Berri needs an absolute majority of 65 votes to be elected in the first round. A second and third vote are possible. On the final round, the winner is the person with the highest number of votes. Local media reported on Monday that, while Mr Berri is guaranteed to be elected in the first or second round, he will probably receive much less support than in 2018. At this time, he won in the first round with 98 votes. He will likely be supported by his own political party, the Amal Movement; its closest ally, Hezbollah; as well as the Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and smaller parties and other people.

Those who said that they will not vote for Mr Berri include Lebanon’s two rival Christian parties, the Lebanese Forces (19 MPs) and the Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement (18 MPs). While the LF have called against voting for Mr Berri since they rejoined political life 2005, the FPM used not to issue clear instructions for or against his election, giving their MPs space for personal initiative. Due to Lebanon’s sectarian politics, it remains important for a Parliament speaker to receive votes from Lebanon’s main religious communities, including Christians. This year, three Armenian Christian MPs are sure to vote for Mr Berri.