Dissecting a waste empire

While everyone in Lebanon — from taxi drivers to elected officials — “knows” the country’s largest waste manager is as dirty as the trash it collects, when pressed for proof, they have little to offer. Indeed, even questioning the “fact” that Sukleen — and, by extension, parent company Averda — is corrupt will likely get you dismissed as a know-nothing. Breaking the near absolute silence the company has maintained since it began operations in Lebanon in the early 1990s, Averda Chief Executive Officer Malek Sukkar opens up to Executive in a two-hour interview after facilitating tours of the company’s operations in Abu Dhabi and Lebanon. Questions about the private, family-founded company remain — most notably concerning their yearly profits — but months of investigation suggest there is more government negligence than corporate wrongdoing to the Averda story. Bringing it back home Maysarah Sukkar moved his engineering company, founded in 1968,