United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the financial meltdown in Lebanon was caused by "something like a fraud," according to video footage which was recorded during a visit to Beirut this week.
Critics of the Lebanese authorities accused the financial system of fraud, which relied on new borrowing to pay off the existing debt, according to Reuters.
But the Central Bank of Lebanon denied this statement.
Guterres said, in the video that was circulated on social media, "As far as I understand, what happened in Lebanon is that authorities were using something similar to a fraud which means that of course besides corruption, and perhaps other forms of theft, the financial system has collapsed."
The collapse caused the Lebanese lire to lose more than 90% of its value, and to freeze savers' deposits in the crippled banking system.
On the other hand, the Central Council of the Banque du Liban confirmed the bank’s commitment to the full provisions of the law on lifting the secrecy of bank accounts for a period of one year, ending this month.
The committee pointed out that this cooperation comes within the framework of the law with the “Alvarez and Marsal” company, which is in charge of criminal auditing of the bank’s accounts.
The Council affirmed - after its meeting on December 2 - its commitment to fulfilling all the additional requests submitted by the concerned company to the Minister of Finance, which were sent to the Banque du Liban on the eleventh of last month.
The Council indicated that the company above mentioned is conducting the accounting audit in the accounts of the central bank for the year 2019, at the request of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stressing that the current stage is the third out of four stages of the contract signed between the government represented by the Minister of Finance and the concerned company.
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