At the end of June, the auditing firm Alvarez & Marsal submitted to the Ministry of Finance a document that quickly served as an excuse for the FPM to relaunch its campaign against the central bank and some of its political opponents. The Caretaker Minister of Finance, Youssef el-Khalil, was then accused of concealing it. The FPM wanted the text to be published because, according to Gebran Bassil’s party, it contains “revelations and names.”
The audit of the central bank’s accounts and financial activities was commissioned, as we all know, by the Lebanese government in September 2021.
In fact, what was called by the FPM “Alvarez & Marsal’s report for the forensic audit of BDL’s accounts and financial activities” is only a rough draft of the first draft. The document was submitted to the Minister of Finance for his comments.
The document consists of 300 full scape pages, 40 of which are press articles about the forensic audit and BDL. The rest is a statement of the facts, with no new revelations or responsibilities determined. No names are mentioned, nor is there any breakdown of losses.
Its contents are generally known to the public. Youssef el-Khalil must therefore ensure that the facts are accurate before sending the text back to the auditing firm to write the first draft of its report.
