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إستماع
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On May 10, 2017, I sat down for a one-hour roundtable in Beirut with Riad Salameh, governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank as part of a broader and bipartisan U.S. think tank delegation. Perhaps Salameh’s aides poorly prepared him, or perhaps he thought he could simply “wing it” by sidestepping tough questions. He soon discovered otherwise: He faced tough questions on money laundering, transparency, corruption and Hezbollah. After 20 minutes of polite but tough questioning, he excused himself and never returned.
Today, Salameh is in prison, facing trial for a variety of corruption charges and illicit enrichment schemes. The French government seeks his extradition, and INTERPOL has placed a red notice on him. Many Lebanese blame Salameh disproportionately for the 2019 currency crisis. That may be unfair only because focusing on the guilt of one man should not exculpate the other elites who treat Lebanon and its government offices as private slush funds.
Lebanon has always been a weak country with a strong sense of nationalism and identity. Through little fault of its own, it has become a platform for regional states to play out rivalries and pursue agendas inimical to Lebanon’s own national interests. April 13, 2025, will mark a half century since the Lebanese Civil War began from which Lebanon never fully recovered.
It now has its best chance, however. The election of Lebanese Armed Forces chief Joseph Aoun to be Lebanon’s president puts an opponent to the Shi’ite group at Lebanon’s helm, a major change since the tenure of Michel Aoun (no relation to Joseph) who was an ally of then terrorist group. Joseph Aoun’s accession could not have happened without the Israeli decimation of Hezbollah, first through “Operation Grim Beeper” and the subsequent rapid elimination of the group’s political and military hierarchy.
Nor is Joseph Aoun the only bright spot. Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam has been problematic while a justice on the International Criminal Court but as a politician, he is straightforward, honest, and firmly opposed to Hezbollah. This leaves the governor of the Lebanese Central Bank as the next key position which must be filled if Lebanon is to make the marginalization of Hezbollah’s internal power permanent.
For decades, the United States and many other countries both donated to Lebanon to rescue the country from insolvency. Absent a serious, honest, and competent Central Bank governor, however, Washington, Brussels, and Riyadh were essentially throwing good money after bad.
The new Trump administration may still be focused on getting its appointees confirmed and cleared, but it would be tragic to lose an opportunity to put the final nail in Hezbollah’s financial coffin. Trump’s Treasury Department team, in conjunction with Secretary of State Marco Rubio should ensure that Lebanon appoints both an honest and competent governor in place to oversee the Central Bank.
The Central Bank has a material role in this “illicit funding war,” but not only that. It can restructure the banking sector to place it on a surer footing with stricter governance rules and solid capitalization and can identify the proceeds of Hezbollah drug trafficking and other illicit schemes. The new governor should also ensure Lebanon limit the use of currency in a cash economy and demand transactions pass through the banking sector and avoid foreign exchanges houses and MoneyGram-like systems. Finally, it should outlaw Hezbollah’s Qard al Hassan parallel banking and pawnshops system.
Several names now float. French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested Samir Assaf. Assaf’s background is impressive. In 2000, Assaf joined the British bank HSBC, and in 2006 he became head of Global Markets for the Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In March 2020, he stepped down from his executive role in HSBC, though he continued in an advisory role and, in October 2021, also took a senior advisory role to General Atlantic, one of the most successful private growth funds.
Assaf is a French citizen, and staunch political backer and supporter of Macron. He previously declined the Central Bank of Lebanon position due to his wife not wanting to relocate from Paris, though had he won the presidency, his wife might have decided otherwise. His weakness, however, may be fatal: he lacks any real knowledge of Lebanon and its politics, and would be more prone to accommodate Hezbollah (at Marcon’s request.
Lebanese have also speculated about Alain Bifani, previously the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance. Bifani graduated from HEC Paris, one of France’s top commerce and finance schools. However, he oversaw the Central Bank of Lebanon during the period of Salameh’s irregularities and either did not detect them or chose to ignore them. He bears responsibility for the disastrous decision to get commercial banks to aggressively source deposits to finance the public debt. He left under a cloud and retired in France, where his memoirs proceeded to blame everyone but himself.
A far better pick might be Karim Souaid who founded Growthgate Partners in 2006 and has served as its managing director since. He was also managing director of Global Investment Banking at HSBC Bank (Middle East) from May 2000, and has taken the lead on successful privatization efforts in Jordan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq. He has an LLM from Harvard Law School and is a member of the New York Bar. Most importantly, he has a staunch record of being anti-Hezbollah.
Trump is right that U.S. assistance should not be an entitlement and should contribute to U.S. strategic objectives. That is true, but the United States must also ensure it has the right technocratic partners. The decision now looming over who will head the Central Bank of Lebanon could easily determine whether Lebanon succeeds, or if Hezbollah resurrects itself.