Lebanon Makes Positive Moves On Money Laundering

by Lorys Charalambous, Tax-News.com, Cyprus

27 November 2001

According to a report in Zawya.com on Saturday, the Lebanese authorities have made moves which suggest that they are now serious about joining the international campaign against money laundering.

Since the September 11th attacks, the government has resisted Western pressure to relax banking secrecy or introduce tougher legislation against terrorist financing, insisting that new laws enacted in April of this year were sufficient to prevent dirty money from flowing through the country.

The newspaper, citing a Daily Star report, revealed that the Lebanese Central Bank last week froze the accounts of three individuals suspected of involvement in money laundering activities, and that earlier in the month, the assets of three locally based companies had also been frozen pending investigation.

However, although this may mark a step forward in relations between the US and Lebanon, which have been somewhat strained since the Lebanese authorities refused to comply with requests to freeze the assets of the Shia political group Hezbollah, the country's Public Prosecutor Adnan Addoum has refused to give details of the cases, or to reveal the identity of the suspects, citing banking secrecy rules.

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