The Banque du Liban — Lebanon’s central bank — announced Wednesday that it is up to the Lebanese state to lift secrecy off its bank accounts, after BDL was accused of failing to hand over all requested documents to global auditing firm Alvarez and Marsal.
Commenting on a study by caretaker Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najem, who noted that “bank secrecy stipulated by Lebanese law does not apply to the state’s accounts and BDL’s accounts,” the central bank pointed out that it has fully handed over statements of its accounts to the caretaker finance minister.
It added: “As for the state’s accounts, the Lebanese state can request a detailed statement of all its accounts and accordingly turn them over to sides it sees befitting of looking into them, which would spare BDL a violation of secrecy laws, which are binding and whose breach would lead to criminal penalties.”
And lamenting that “newspapers, including international ones, and social networking websites have recently published information provided to the Alvarez & Marsal firm through the finance ministry, which represents a violation of the law and of the stipulations of the contract signed between the ministry and the aforementioned firm,” BDL announced that it has handed over all the documents requested by the KPMG and Oliver Wyman auditing firms.
It also noted that it has hired two international firms for the auditing of its account since 1994.