While Lebanon bakes in the summer heat and people bend under the weight of high gasoline prices and seasonal energy shortages, the judiciary recently launched investigations into high-profile corruption and squandering of funds at the national power utility, Electricité du Liban, (EDL) and the ministry for energy and water resources. Two advisors to the ministry, Rudy Baroudy and Majed Qostantine, were taken into custody and questioned over their alleged involvement in fraudulent trade with oil derivatives and with illegally enriching themselves.
From late June, investigative authorities issued a flurry of summons for questioning against the two advisors, employees at EDL and businessmen working in the import of oil derivatives. The cases of fraud and graft in the oil sector partly date back to 1999, when the former oil minister, Shahe Barsoumian, was arrested for supposedly skimming funds in the magnitude of $800 million from illicit oil deals. At the time, observers considered Barsoumian to be a possible scapegoat for other figures implicated in the oil scandal, and until today the file of suspicious affairs in the energy sector remains multi-faceted: Alleged wrongdoings also include charges relating to shady contracting and consulting agreements as well as to opaque procedures in awarding operator contracts for the nation’s power plants.
While results of the current investigations have yet to be made public, it is curious that the problems in the energy sector attracted such intense official scrutiny just after high energy costs played a big role in the severe unrest during the May 28 demonstrations. Did new evidence surface or could politics and election-time machinations have been involved in the investigation? “We are researching why these investigations have come to the fore right now,” said Charles Adwan, anti-corruption campaigner for the Lebanese chapter of watchdog organization Transparency International.
