Salam Resorts to Undetailed Financial Process to Fund STL
Prime Minister Tammam Salam used an undetailed financial process to pay Lebanon’s full share of funds to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Saturday.
The daily reported that the March 8 alliance ministers informed Salam that they reject to fund the STL, urging him to allocate the money to fund the tribunal from sources other than the state's treasury.
Sources told the newspaper that Salam resorted to an undetailed financial process, demanding Lebanon's Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh to allocate the fund from several financial institutions, which the government will repay at a later time.
The U.N.-backed STL confirmed Thursday that it has received Lebanon's share of its 2014 budget from the Lebanese government.
Lebanon is obligated to pay around $33 million, which is 49 percent of the STL's budget.
The tribunal was formed in 2009 to investigate the suicide attack that killed Hariri and 22 others in Beirut in February 2005.
The in-absentia trial of several Hizbullah members accused of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri had opened in The Hague on January 16, 2014.
To date, 36 witnesses have testified before the tribunal and a total of 461 exhibits were admitted into evidence.
H.K.
D.A.
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