A shroud of mystery surrounding the bankruptcy of a top Lebanese financier was growing as his list of alleged victims, mainly Muslim Shiites, also does.
Salah Ezzedine, a Shiite from southern Lebanon in his 50s who has been dubbed the “Bernard Madoff” of his country, was arrested earlier this week when he filed for bankruptcy.
Reports surfaced that he had squandered more than 1.5 billion dollars (1.05 billion euros) of his clients’ money.
Mohammed al-Duheini, mayor of the southern town of Toura, said that “around 250 residents from my town placed their money in the hands of Salah Ezzedine, and he would give them interest rates that topped 25 percent.
“He managed to win the trust of the Shiites of south Lebanon and handled a lot of their money,” he told AFP.
Local papers have reported that Ezzedine offered interest rates as high as 60 percent and that part of his clientele was from the oil-rich Gulf.
But prosecutor Saeed Mirza said there were no official figures as yet on Ezzedine’s finances, and that the bankruptcy claim had yet to be verified.
“We are still gathering information,” he told AFP.
While Ezzedine’s own political beliefs are unclear, most of his clients were supporters of Hizbullah, Duheini says.
Hizbullah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan was among the first to file a complaint against Ezzedine over a bounced check, according to the local media.
“What people heard about him was that he is protected by Hizbullah and is an honest man who runs charities,” Duheini said.
“They looked to him as the savior of the south and its people, as the protector of the Shiites’ finances.”
Under Lebanon’s banking secrecy law, banks cannot reveal their clients’ names, assets or holdings except in cases of bankruptcy or if granted written authorization by the client.
Lebanese authorities have closed down Dar al-Hadi Publishing House which was owned by Ezzedine.
Dar al-Hadi was one of Lebanon’s prominent publishing houses of religious Shiite books in Beirut’s southern suburbs.(AFP-Naharnet)(AP photo shows a man checking books at Dar Al-Hadi.)
