The Salameh Papers: Special report into allegations against former Lebanon banking chief
Lebanon's former Central Bank governor Riad Salameh, who was arrested over alleged financial wrongdoing, has been moved from hospital to Roumieh prison.
He was arrested on Friday at Bhannes Hospital, north of the Lebanese capital, after failing to appear before a judge for questioning a day earlier. Mr Salameh had been summoned for questioning on Thursday by Samaranda Nassar of the Court of Cassation. The questioning concerned a complaint filed by the current governor of Lebanon's central bank, Karim Souaid.
“He's in Roumieh prison,” a judicial source said on Monday morning. “Concerning his health conditions, the examining doctor deemed it was not serious enough for him to stay at the hospital; that's why he was moved to Roumieh. It's only a matter of blood pressure, that's it,” they added.
Roumieh is Lebanon's largest prison and overlooks Beirut from its eastern suburbs. Rights groups have regularly criticised its overcrowded and squalid conditions.
Mr Salameh was indicted in July last year and released on $20 million bail.
In a statement issued through their lawyers, his family said that the 76-year-old needed to be kept “under intensive medical supervision” and that his health status was unstable.
They also said Mr Salameh had complied with the judicial investigation into him, and that not keeping him under constant medical supervision harms the investigation itself.
For three decades, Mr Salameh was one of the country’s most influential people and had even been touted as a potential presidential candidate. However, his arrest in September 2024 for embezzling public funds, forgery, illicit enrichment and money laundering revealed a side to a man who was once lauded as the guardian of the country's financial sector.
He has become a figure of ridicule in Lebanon following a 2019 economic crisis, the effects of which reverberate today. That crisis was blamed on decades of financial mismanagement and corruption among the Lebanese elite, including Mr Salameh.
The crisis saw the local currency plummet in value by more than 95 per cent on the parallel dollar market, while informal capital controls implemented by the banks meant vast numbers of depositors were locked out of their savings – a situation that continues.
