Head of the Finance and Budget Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan has lowered expectations about the possibility of recovering looted funds, pointing to a study by the World Bank saying that the global recovery rate according to the United Nations does not exceed 0.2%.
The Parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee is currently assisting a government panel “to set up an integrated plan that includes, in addition to restructuring the public debt, a comprehensive economic and financial strategy that restores confidence in Lebanon’s finances and banking sector,” Kanaan said, following a meeting between the committee and the visiting IMF delegation on Monday.
During a workshop on mechanisms for recovering looted funds in Parliament, the deputy noted that a new system of legislation was aimed at fighting corruption.
“But the problem lies in immunities and interference in the work of the judiciary,” he said, stressing that Lebanon was one of the countries classified by the World Bank as “suffering from such interventions and lack of independence.”
Pointing to the World Bank study, Kanaan said that the looting of public money amounted to $40 billion annually “in countries that suffer the same situation as in Lebanon, and so far there are no fruitful results in recovering the looted money, which is not only a Lebanese issue, but a global one, as the global recovery rate according to the United Nations is only 0.2 percent.”
