Outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said that Central Bank Governor Riad Salame “has immunity and nobody can dismiss him.”
Following talks with Salame at the Center House in downtown Beirut, Hariri called for the formation of the new government.
“We will give the new cabinet a chance to work and see what it will produce, and then we will decide our position on it,” he said.
Hariri slammed the Free Patriotic Movement, which is founded by President Michel Aoun, accusing it of wasting the funds of the energy ministry.
Hariri responded to the campaigns against Salame, saying “everyone wants to blame the Central Bank for all the financial woes in the country. But ... here are 47 to 50 billion dollars that the Lebanese state borrowed for electricity. If we had accomplished the reforms required for electricity since day one, there would have been 47 billion in the pockets of the Lebanese.”
“These billions are today in the pockets of the owners of illegal generators and you know who they are,” he added.
He added: “Before blaming anyone, we have to see where this money went and how it was spent.”
“The (Central Bank) governor has immunity and nobody can dismiss him, and let every government assume its responsibilities,” he stressed.
Hariri, who resigned shortly after anti-government protests first began in mid-October, said the violence in Beirut’s Hamra thoroughfare was “unacceptable" and an aggression on the heart of the capital.
He called for an investigation.
Protesters clashed with security forces in Beirut Wednesday, a day after demonstrators outraged by restrictions on dollar withdrawals attacked bank branches with metal rods, fire extinguishers and rocks in Hamra.
“I returned to Lebanon because it is my duty to come back and be among the people. I am no one’s employee,” Hariri, who had been in Paris since the end of December, said.
He was responding to a question on whether he had faced a political coup.
