Banks, properties, and a lawyer: the Riad Salameh affair and its Swiss connections

As head of the Central Bank of Lebanon – Banque du Liban (BDL) – for 30 years, Riad Salameh is widely held responsible for the country’s financial collapse in 2019. Lebanon is once again plunged into an infernal war, having been bombed by Israel since the end of September. Salameh, who left office in Summer 2023, is also suspected of having swindled the BDL out of hundreds of millions of dollars. He is currently under investigation in around 10 countries, including Switzerland. Nearly USD 330 million in alleged illicit assets were identified in accounts at HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland) SA in Geneva. According to exclusive documents accessed by Public Eye, some of these funds then enabled him to acquire two properties on the Vaud coast in Switzerland, including a building in Rolle in 2019. Riad Salameh was able to acquire these properties by hiding behind two companies constituted under Swiss law, which were registered and administered by a Geneva-based lawyer, who was acting in tandem with a well-known local property developer.

Riad Salameh, who was arrested in Beirut on September 3rd, is now at the heart of an international investigation that led to the identification of the complex schemes used to allegedly embezzle public funds. Public Eye’s investigation completes the picture, highlighting the ramifications of the Salameh affair in Switzerland. The criminal proceedings initiated in Switzerland by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) against Riad Salameh and his brother Raja, on suspicion of aggravated money laundering, have established that between April 2002 and March 2015, nearly USD 330 million were transferred from the BDL to the HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland) in Geneva, to the account held by Forry Associates, a small offshore entity registered in the British Virgin Islands. Its beneficial owner is Raja Salameh. Some of this money was then distributed to accounts in Lebanon, as well as to offshore companies which had Riad Salameh, who was still head of the BDL at the time, as the ultimate beneficiary and which mostly held their accounts in Switzerland. According to investigators, these alleged illicit funds were said to have enabled the Salameh clan to accumulate real-estate assets in several countries.

In Switzerland, Riad Salameh relied on two companies constituted under Swiss law, which he controlled: SI 2 SA and Red Street 10 SA. They received, directly and indirectly, alleged illicit funds from Forry Associates. They are both administered by a Geneva-based lawyer and domiciled at the Geneva address of a major real estate group. As we have revealed, based on previously unpublished documents, Red Street 10 SA – and its beneficial owner Riad Salameh in the background – currently owns two office buildings in Morges and Rolle. The property in Rolle, worth CHF 17 million, was acquired in August 2019, a few months before Lebanon plunged into one of the worst financial crises in its history. After we contacted the Geneva-based lawyer, he emphasized that after "four years of investigation, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland has neither shown any interest in questioning me nor made any accusations against me." He has temporarily prevented the publication of our investigation by requesting ex-parte interim measures before an agreement was reached at the Court of First Instance in Geneva.

Until now, the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) has only applied to the activities of lawyers if they act as financial intermediaries. Under international pressure, the Federal Council had already tried to make them subject to due diligence when they act as "advisors", for example when creating, managing and administering companies. But this reform was rejected by Swiss Parliament in 2021, after two years of intense lobbying by some members of the profession. As part of the ongoing revision of the AMLA, a slimmed-down version of this reform is once again being fought tooth and nail, promising heated debates in Parliament, as we reported in another article.