He is the man the Lebanese adored and now want to burn. Governor of the country's central bank for almost three decades, Riad Salamé, 69, embodied the dreams of revival of the post-civil war era, when the Lebanese pound, indexed to the dollar, offered residents power jealous of purchase throughout the region. Today, the same Salamé is associated with the bankruptcy of the state and the collapse of the national currency, falling 60% against the dollar.
In the eyes of the population, whose bank deposits are threatening to evaporate, the "magician" of the 1990s and 2000s now appears as an apprentice sorcerer. His famous "engineering", which has long allowed the Cedar country to defy the laws of financial gravity, precipitated a crisis of Dantesque proportions. An astronomical sum sums it up: 68 billion dollars (62 billion euros), the cumulative losses of the central bank (50 billion) and the private banks (18 billion).
“Riad Salamé is a remarkable poker player, said economist Charbel Nahas, former minister of telecommunications and labor and former bank manager. But after thirty years, the addition of clever montages, disgraceful innovations and lack of courage has given birth to a monster. " The boss of the BDL (Banque du Liban), located on rue Hamra, the main commercial artery of Beirut, shares responsibility for this catastrophe with the political class, known for its carelessness and corruption.
However, as the mastermind of monetary policy, at the helm under eleven successive governments, its share in the disaster is greater than many others. "He is the treasurer of the system, the financial pump that has kept all these people in power, said Sibylle Rizk, director of public policy for the NGO Kulluna Irada. The role of a banker, in the face of an insolvent client, is to tell him, and if he is not listened to, to withdraw. What he never did. " Riad Salamé did not answer the questions that The world sent him.
The native of Kfardebian, a village in the Maronite mountains, was parachuted at the head of the monetary institution in 1993, at the age of 43. Formerly of the Merrill Lynch business bank, he owes his appointment to his friend Rafic Hariri, an entrepreneur who became Prime Minister of Lebanon. The wealth manager helped him grow the wealth he had amassed on construction sites in Saudi Arabia.
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