Introduction
When the new history of Lebanon is recorded, it is necessary to stop at the day on which Law 54 of 1991 was issued, which is the “War Crimes Amnesty Law”. With the stroke of a pen, crimes committed between 1975 and 1990 were amnestied, i.e. fifteen years of civil war that claimed the lives of about 150,000 people, and the fate of 17,000 kidnapped people whose families are still asking about them still not clear, adding to that a massive destruction. So the parliament decided to erase all crimes committed on Lebanese territory without accountability.
Picture taking by me in the 2019
The law served the interests of the war militia leaders who seized power. From the moment they moved from behind the barricades to the seats of power, they established with this presence the violation of the constitution and turned against the republic. They did not delay in taking steps that distinguish their tyranny, such as the immunities system, the impunity law, and others. As political leaders, they have in their hands the state's institutions, resources, and the future of its people.
The legalization of amnesty for war crimes, which indicated a domineering "gang of villains", culminated in the financial, economic, and social collapses that erupted in October 2019, followed by a policy of imposing amnesty for financial crimes.
The judiciary was prevented from adjudicating the lawsuits filed against the looting parties, such as the political-militia banking cartel, which the French judiciary described as a "gang of villains". While the World Bank described what is happening in Lebanon as a "Ponzi scheme" that causes unprecedented suffering for the Lebanese people.
Today, after about 5 years of the collapse and the looting of deposits exceeding $120 billion, there is no one accused at all. There is also great fear for the state's assets with the mafia's plan to create a "sovereign" fund that enables them to seize the future and share it. This secures the opportunity for the wealthy segment of the "civil peace" era to launder the money they looted!
The collapse path has passed through many stations between the amnesty law for war crimes and the current, worsening collapse. Perhaps the most prominent of these stations is the August 1, 1993 station with the appointment of a governor for the Central Bank, who is a partner in all these collapses.
The policy of raising interest rates on treasury bonds to attract foreign savings, and then issuing treasury bonds in dollars, did not succeed, so the dollar deficit in public finances quickly emerged. This necessitated holding conferences known as Paris 1, 2 and 3 at the beginning of the current millennium. Then the collapse path began and the scope of suspicious practices expanded: such as using the book profits of gold to extinguish the treasury's debts to the Bank of Lebanon, and forcing banks to make mandatory investments in dollars not stipulated by law, so they closed and left the branches of foreign banks.
The third stage was the issuance of certificates of deposit in dollars with generous interest, to encourage banks to subscribe to them from their deposit balances, so the great gamble began, and the banking cartel began transferring illicit profits abroad. The Central Bank refrained from publishing its budgets after 2003, and the "forensic audit" came to reveal aspects of the shortcomings, as the commissions reached billions of dollars, which the judiciary prevented from investigating!
They all celebrated the governor's achievements and the certificates that were granted to him by an effective public relations apparatus. Despite the decline in remittances from the Lebanese after 2011, officials' praise of the strength of the banking sector and the slogan "The lira is fine" expanded. It did not end there, as the presidential settlement candidate in 2016, which brought the former president to power, was "the straw that broke the camel's back". Gulf and Arab investments were liquidated due to their lack of confidence in him.
While their insistence that the economy was strong and the lira was fine was striking, the dominant and diverse cartel began transferring money abroad from the beginning of 2017. The "Special Investigation Commission" at the Central Bank of Lebanon reveals that between October 17, 2019 and December 31, 2019, hundreds of politicians and influential people smuggled their money. Before that, the financial engineering of the governor of the bank caused the financial gap in the Central Bank of Lebanon to widen, reaching about 6 billion dollars, distributed to the political banking cartel!
Conclusion
Over the years following the collapse, the middle class disappeared and the number of those impoverished rose to about 80 percent, while the segment of the wealthy of the era of "civil peace" expanded. The "parallel economy" of the state grew and the role of "private financial institutions" became entrenched as an alternative to banks.
In a time when "the system of justice and values is violated and the reference of right and wrong is lax, everything becomes permissible," as for Abraham Lincoln.