Inside the Bank Audi Play: How Public Money Became Private Profit

For years, Lebanon’s banking sector appeared to function not as an arm of public policy, but as the financial playground of a small circle of political and banking elites. Newly surfaced documents in the French case against Riad and Raja Salame, banker Marwan Khaireddine lawyer Marwan Issa el Khoury and auditor Antoine Gholam outline how a triangle of interests involving businessman/politician Najib Mikati, Banque du Liban (BDL) ex Governor Riad Salame, and Bank Audi Chairman Samir Hanna allegedly used the Central Bank as a private capital reservoir—at the expense of the Lebanese public.

 

 

The case revolves around a complex 2010–2016 operation involving cross-loans, offshore vehicles, regulatory bypasses, and insider payouts that reportedly generated over USD 600 million to the trio, without risk or personal capital deployed by the key beneficiaries.

The Trigger: BDL Steps In Where It Legally Should Not

In January 2010, BDL purchased 1.692 million Bank Audi shares and GDR securities from EFG Hermes. The purpose: to pressure EFG Hermes to finalize an internal transaction and prevent “reputational risks” in Lebanon’s banking sector.

However, Lebanon’s Monetary and Credit Code Articles 110 and 111 explicitly prohibit BDL from taking equity stakes in banks it regulates. To bypass this, a workaround was set up in offshore jurisdictions to conceal their identities.

The Cayman Islands Workaround: Shells Below the Disclosure Line

A Cayman Islands company—Middle East Opportunities for Structured Finance Ltd (MOSF)—was incorporated exclusively for the transaction. Its initial purchase was valued at roughly USD 153 million paid by BDL money.

But MOSF was only one piece of the structure. Four Cayman vehicles were created concurrently, each acquiring 4.95%of Bank Audi shares—strategically just below the 5% threshold that triggers mandatory disclosure for publicly listed companies. This allowed the operation to proceed quietly and evade scrutiny.

The Financing Loop: Public Money In, Private Assets Out

The alleged financing architecture was circular:

• BDL disbursed USD 153M to Cayman MOSF, purportedly held by the Mikatis, enabling the offshore entities to buy Audi shares.
• Bank Audi then loaned the Mikatis about USD 300M, allowing them to buy even more of its own shares.

Thus, the Central Bank effectively funded a private takeover of a major Lebanese bank—while the bank (Audi) financed the buyers’ purchase of its own equity. Offshore shells in Cayman served as the holding layer, with no offices, staff, substance, or accounting—classic opacity structures.

2012–2014: Transfers Through Cayman Shadows

In 2012, the Audi shares purchased via MOSF were transferred to newly incorporated Levant Finance Ltd in the Caymans. Yet the Bank Audi registers never recorded Levant Finance as a shareholder.

Two years later, in July 2014, another Cayman vehicle—Levant Finance 2 Ltd—was created, to which the same shares were re-assigned. This layering further distanced the assets from scrutiny and confused beneficial ownership trails.

The Real Beneficiaries: A Triangle, Not a Family

While the Mikati family publicly fronted the entities, sources claim that they represented a broader triangle of interests: Riad Salame, Samir Hanna, and their family members.

In this structure, the Mikatis functioned as the visible actors, while the financial benefits reportedly fed outward to the real architects.

The Cash-Out Phase: Real Estate, Dividends, and BDL Engineering

Cashing out came in three main waves:

1. A Sale to Hariri Interests
   Some of the Shares were sold to Fahd Hariri (Brother of Former PM Saad Hariri) c FRH Investment holding . Payment of over 100 million dollars was reportedly made part cash, part land, including a valuable Raouché beachfront parcel—one of Beirut’s most prized real estate zones.
2. A sale to the European Bank of Reconstruction and development for over 60 million dollars
3. BDL’s 2016 “Financial Engineering” Operation and cash injections in Bank Audi
   In, particular, in 2015 BDL injected USD 536 million into Bank Audi. Profits from the operation were swiftly distributed as dividends to the Mikatis and co-beneficiaries. Those dividends then financed repayments on the 300m loan used to buy part of the shares in the first place.

The net effect:
A high-profit, zero-cost operation generating over USD 460 million for the inner circle, in addition to the 250 million dollars of dividends paid to Salame, Samir Hanna and the Mikatis while loading the central bank with liabilities later socialized onto Lebanese depositors and the public.

Legal Architecture: The “Structuring” Brain

The legal structuring and contract drafting behind the multi-phase scheme were attributed according to sources to lawyer  Camille Abu Sleiman, a lawyer at Dechert in London and a  figure later floated as a candidate to govern BDL itself. He coordinated the operations with Bank Audi and BDL’s Riad Salame and Pierre Kannan.

Public Bank, Private Gains

If the allegations are accurate, the operation represents a stark example of how BDL was used as a private equity fund for political and financial elites. While insiders leveraged state resources for personal profit, the eventual losses were pushed onto Lebanon’s depositors, taxpayers, and financial system—culminating in the catastrophic 2019–2020 banking collapse. At the time Bank Audi was unable to repay BDL the $2 billion dollars it already owed the central bank . What did Bank Audi do with these “loans” from the Central Bank? It distributed  a large portion as dividends to the shareholders of the bank, among whom was Riad Salame himself, the Mikatis and Samir Hanna.

Beyond a Single Operation: A Pattern

The alleged Mikati–Salame–Hanna transaction is not an isolated event but part of a broader mechanism that dominated Lebanon’s post-2005 financial era: using sovereign institutions for private gain, obscured through offshore law, regulatory loopholes, and elite coordination.

The Lebanese public is now paying for it in lost deposits, currency collapse, and a ruined banking system—while the beneficiaries quietly exited years earlier.