Lebanon charges former central bank governor and ex-Bank Audi chief together

What happened

A Lebanese judge has issued new charges against former central bank governor Riad Salame and a former commercial banker over alleged financial crimes. OCCRP, citing Lebanon’s National News Agency, reported that Judge Raja Hamouche filed proceedings on Monday 10 August 2026 against Salame, 76, and Samir Hanna, 88, the former head of Bank Audi, one of Lebanon’s largest banks. The alleged offences include embezzlement, money laundering, bribery, and illicit enrichment.

The allegations, as OCCRP describes them, cover the creation of shell companies, the misappropriation of funds belonging to the Central Bank, and the fraudulent use of those funds to buy shares and bonds in commercial banks. The Public Prosecutor of Appeal requested an arrest warrant against Salame. Media have reported that he is under medical supervision at a hospital in Beirut.

Nobody has been convicted. Salame has repeatedly denied all charges against him, and his lawyer did not respond to OCCRP’s request for comment. Hanna has reportedly already paid a $1 million bail and is not in custody; he could not be reached for comment. OCCRP gives no figure for these new charges, and describes the development as the second indictment against Salame in Lebanon this year and the third in total.

Separately, European authorities allege that Salame siphoned more than $300 million from the central bank using a front company owned by his brother, which allegedly charged exorbitant commissions on commercial bank transactions. Investigations across Switzerland, France, Germany, and Luxembourg also allege that hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen public funds were funneled into luxury real estate and bank accounts across Europe. Salame has denied those accusations too.

Why it matters

Read as analysis rather than as a finding, this is the extreme politically exposed person (PEP) case. Salame ran Banque du Liban for three decades before stepping down in July 2023. Hanna ran one of the country’s largest commercial banks. Both would have sat at the very top of any correspondent bank’s Lebanon file, screened, escalated, approved, and reviewed by senior management. The charges allege bribery running between them.

That is the uncomfortable part. Standard PEP controls assume the customer is exposed to a state that supervises them. Here the allegation is that the supervisor and the supervised were transacting with each other. Screening a name against a sanctions list does very little when the person in question writes the rules.

One more inversion is worth noting. Lebanon’s central bank launched legal action in July against additional targets alleged to have played a role in the 2019 financial meltdown, following a complaint initiated in January by current governor Karim Soueid targeting Salame and Hanna. The institution that was allegedly looted is now the plaintiff. Badih Moukarzel, the central bank’s lead counsel, told Daraj: “The banks have to pay back. Money has to be returned; we are talking billions of dollars.”

Practitioner angle

Pull your Lebanon exposure file and check what your PEP records actually say. If Salame or Hanna appear as a customer, a signatory, a director, an introducer, or a source-of-wealth reference for anyone else, that relationship needs a fresh look under the new proceedings, hedged correctly as allegations rather than findings.

Test the assumption underneath your PEP model. Where the customer is a regulator, a central banker, or a supervisor, adverse media and network mapping do more work than list screening. Ask whether your enhanced due diligence for that tier includes the counterparties a PEP transacts with, not just the PEP.

Watch the recovery side too. If your institution holds assets that could become the subject of a state recovery claim, brief legal early rather than at the point a request lands.

The one thing to do this week: confirm your escalation path for a senior foreign official who is charged but not convicted, because waiting for a verdict is not a control.