Beirut: Just when everyone had concluded that the Cabinet was hopelessly deadlocked, the Tammam Salam Government scored a resounding victory, the first of a kind.
On Thursday, and notwithstanding certain objections from two unnamed ministers, the government appointed a new five-member Banking Control Commission (BCC) and did so under the premier’s fresh decision-making mechanism that shelved the old formula for unanimous support from all 24 officials. Observers anticipated similar nominations for other public appointments in the weeks ahead.
The BCC’s new members comprise Samir Hammoud as president, and Joseph Sarkis, Ahmad Safa, Munir Alyan and Sami Azar as members, representing different religious sects in line with the state’s “power-sharing” formula. All five are qualified for their posts, with Hammoud serving as a senior executive at BankMed, a leading institution capitalised by the Hariri family.
The commission works with the Central Bank and is backed by more than 131 trained staff, to evaluate the financial soundness of all regulated entities, and ensure that they are in accordance with the law.
The BCC was founded in 1967 in the aftermath of the scandal that deflated Intra Bank, after a run was made on the then two-year old financial institution controlled by a Palestinian mogul, Yousuf Baydas.
Although Intra was recapitalised in the mid-1980s, with the Central Bank holding 28 per cent, the Kuwaiti government 19 per cent, the National Bank of Kuwait 4 four per cent, and the government of Qatar 3 per cent, the damage was serious. Beirut then created the BCC, whose duties focused on a close supervision of banks, financial institutions, money dealers, brokerage firms and leasing firms, precisely to prevent speculations and bankruptcies.
Observers concluded that the Prime Minister was persuasive with his ministers as he stressed the value of the banking sector for the economy and to Lebanese elites in general. It was unclear, however, whether the new appointees could start their mandate without taking an oath, presumably because the Constitution required the verbal pledge to be sworn before the president of the republic, who was still in abeyance.
