March 08, 2016
Lebanon has seen a rise in the reported cases on suspicious money laundering and terrorism financing in 2015, demonstrating the vigilance of the Lebanese banks in combating these phenomena, the secretary-general of the country’s Special Investigation Commission said. “The reported cases received by SIC in 2015 were higher. We have not released the figures yet but the received cases rose around 40 percent compared to 2014,” Abdul Hafiz Mansour told The Daily Star in an exclusive interview.
The SIC is one of Lebanon’s financial watchdogs, investigating transactions that smack of money laundering. It has the authority to lift banking secrecy and freeze accounts and transactions, but leaves trials and judgments to judicial authorities. In 2014, the SIC said that it received 277 cases from local and foreign sources and took decisions including freezing and lifting the banking secrecy in 13 of these cases.
Mansour said with the rising caseload, the lifting of banking secrecy on suspicious accounts will naturally be more pervasive.
“This shows that banks are more vigilant and are conducting their work with more competence, as more due diligence work is done on customer accounts,” he explained. The SIC intends to release the full report on 2015 in few weeks and this publication will show the nature and breakdown of the cases it received from different sources from around the world.
Mansour said that cases on terrorism financing in 2015 was higher than 2014; the same went for cybercrime cases, which grew significantly. But Mansour did not reveal the total value of the cases that have been reported to SIC last year.