Constitutional challenges and the fight against impunity

Accountability is a fundamental tool for fighting corruption effectively, the formula for success being to make the cost of corruption, through holding the concerned individuals to account, much greater than its benefits to them. However, the sad reality in Lebanon is the continued wide prevalence of impunity, particularly in the cases of grand corruption, which signals that corruption is systemic, in the sense that it is not accidental, but a tool for the real operation of the political system as a confessional-based multiple oligarchy controlling citizens and the state’s public goods, redistributed to political clients through acts of corruption. Corrupt acts in such a system, are not only limited to criminal offenses, petty or grand, (such as bribery, misappropriation of public funds or illicit enrichment), but extends to practices, many of which are based on laws or decrees (thus the adjective often used of “legalized corruption”), involving the abuse of