Reading Time: 5 minutes From farming to hospitality
Sama Hospitality Ventures (SHV) started off as an idea to make commercial use of co-founders’ Ali and Omar El Mais’ late father’s land in Bekaa where the two brothers grew up. “We had to look for a higher return alternative than planting wheat or just leaving the land idle,” explains Ali who comes from an investment management background and completed his MBA at INSEAD.
SAMA HOSPITALITY VENTURES Farm-to-Table at Scale
Executive is hiring!
Reading Time: 2 minutes Executive Magazine is looking to hire a new sections editor. The new sections editor will take responsibility for researching and writing analytical pieces that satisfy the highest journalistic standards. She/he will contribute to special reports for our coverage of new economic sectors in Lebanon, as well as traditional economic pillars that continue to play important roles in the Lebanese economy, from hospitality…
UNDP and Executive Magazine partner to advance dialogue on addressing corruption in Lebanon
Reading Time: 2 minutes Beirut, 20 August 2020 – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Executive Magazine, Lebanon’s premier economic, financial, and business magazine, are today announcing a new partnership to support national dialogue on efforts to fight corruption in Lebanon through evidence-based analysis and actionable recommendations. The fight against corruption is a top national priority amid efforts…
To you, our enemy
Reading Time: 2 minutes The massive destruction caused by criminal negligence on behalf of our politicians is impossible to assess. Innocent lives were lost. Property, seaport, livelihoods, schools, hospitals, homes, jobs, businesses, trade, dreams, and aspirations were totally destroyed. The impact of this deadly criminal act will reverberate for years to come. Beyond razing the wonderful cultural heritage from…
FUCK OFF
Reading Time: 12 minutes Truthful words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not truthful. Good men do not argue. Those who argue are not good. Those who know are not learned. The learned do not know. Lao Tzu At this pivotal moment of Lebanon’s history, it would be counterproductive and even evil to mince words. It is, in the…
Toward building a more inclusive and resilient ecosystem
Reading Time: 3 minutes It is a time when Lebanon is constricted in boundaries like perhaps never before. Its physical land boundaries have long been—as once again recently demonstrated—marked by the contradiction of being repressively impermeable and permanently under threats, and at the same time too permeable and uncertain to offer the full protection of a territorial demarcation. Long…
Special report on anti-corruption in Lebanon
Reading Time: 3 minutes Throughout June and July, the Executive team, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and experts both in and outside the country, was working on a special report on anti-corruption in Lebanon. It was to be the main focus of the magazine; we had a cover commissioned and executed perfectly by illustrator Sasha…
Lebanon’s anti-corruption movement
Reading Time: 8 minutes Editor’s note: This piece was slightly modified after the Beirut Port explosion. It was, however, largely written prior to August 4 along with the other contributions to the anti-corruption special report. There has not been a time in Lebanon when anti-corruption was a nationwide demand and a necessity for the preservation and development of the country…
Lebanon’s struggle for the right to information
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the three and a half years since Parliament passed Law 28/2017 on access to information (A2I) some progress has been made but there remain barriers to full implementation. Calls for greater transparency and accountability were a major component of the demands of the Lebanese who took to the streets in October last year, seen…
How could asset recovery work for Lebanon?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Each year, developing countries lose between $20 to $40 billion due to bribery, misappropriation of funds, and other corrupt practices. These criminal acts drain economic development initiatives, contribute to further impoverishment, and come with other societal costs, such as the negative impact on education and public health services. One way of combating these practices is…
How Lebanon can learn from other countries’ experiences with asset recovery
Reading Time: 5 minutes Recovering assets corrupt officials have stolen while in government service is a critical part of a government’s fight against corruption. First of all, it deters corruption. If those who would steal from the public while ostensibly serving it know they have little chance of keeping what they take, they will be less tempted to steal…
Does Lebanon need a special anti-corruption court?
Reading Time: 3 minutes In June, Parliament’s Anti-Corruption Subcommittee began discussing the establishment of a special court on financial crimes. Its proposed jurisdiction ranges from counterfeit and forgery of money and documents to bribery and abuse of power by public officials on active and former duty. Such a scope of offenses would fall under what we at the U4…
Lebanon could utilize unexplained wealth orders to recover stolen assets
Reading Time: 4 minutes Asset recovery requires global cooperation. According to the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative database, in 2018 the approximate amount of stolen funds that have been frozen, confiscated, or returned to affected countries since 1980 equals $8.2 billion, involving over 50 requesting and over 40 requested jurisdictions. These numbers, however, pale in comparison to the estimates…
Q&A with legal expert Paul Morcos on judicial capacity and accountability
Reading Time: 6 minutes They are somewhat remote issues from the perspective of daily survival in the summer of 2020. But the questions of financial accountability and judicial processing of the complex aspects of the corrupted system and adequate prosecution of corruption are pregnant with implications for Lebanon’s systemic networks of fiefdoms, sublime tribal rulers, and previously extra-judicial interest…
Q&A with economist Freddie Baz on Lebanon’s economic survival
Reading Time: 20 minutes In discussing Lebanon’s economic survival, some local opinion makers and economists have been making nothing but dire predictions since the fourth quarter of 2019. Executive wanted to take the perspective of Freddie Baz, a Lebanese economist, banker, and citizen who has for over two decades been a regular interlocutor of this magazine on banking and…