ANSD : Hezbollah says will press on with anti-corruption drive

SUN 24 - 11 - 2024

Date: Mar 9, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

Hezbollah says will press on with anti-corruption drive

_{Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: Hezbollah will forge ahead with its promised battle against corruption to the end regardless of the consequences because “we want to prevent the collapse of Lebanon’s economy and halt the theft of public funds,” the party’s head Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said Friday.

Nasrallah also emphasized that clearing the state’s financial accounts from 1993 to 2017, including the $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending during former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s tenure from 2005 and 2009, was the key to unleashing economic reforms. The reforms are deemed essential to salvage the country’s struggling economy, reeling under $85 billion in public debt, an endemic budget deficit and slow growth.

In a televised speech addressing supporters in the south, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs on the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Resistance Support Association, the group’s fund-raising arm, Nasrallah called for donations as the party was coming under financial pressure as a result of tight sanctions from Western countries.

Nasrallah’s rare appeal clearly reflected financial difficulties Hezbollah has been facing as a result of tough sanctions, imposed by the United States on the party, as well as on its main backer, Iran, in an attempt to dry up the group’s financial sources. Washington and Arab Gulf states brand Hezbollah a “terrorist organization.”

Ramping up pressure on Hezbollah, Britain last month decided to designate the entirety of the party as a terrorist group. The United Kingdom had formerly proscribed just Hezbollah’s external security organization and its military wing in 2001, and its Jihad Council in 2008 - not its political wing.

“The Resistance Support Association must provide an opportunity for jihad by money. The resistance needs [financial] support and the Support Association must strongly energize its activities because we are in the heart of the battle,” Nasrallah said, citing a Koranic verse that called on Muslims for “jihad by money.”

Referring to Iran’s support, Nasrallah said: “Those who have supported us will continue to support us, be they states or peoples. We might face [financial] difficulties, but this resistance will not be weakened. Rather, it will be further strengthened in order to achieve more victories.”

Nasrallah said he expected U.S. sanctions “to get tighter on us and our supporters.” He said: “We may see new names, and new people, and new organizations added to the sanctions lists.”

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station has been broadcasting daily commercial advertisements asking for donations for the Support Association.

Nasrallah vowed that his party would press on with the battle against corruption to the end, saying that the anti-graft fight was equal to Hezbollah’s guerrilla war that ended Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000. He warned that corruption, largely blamed for the waste of public funds, threatened the country’s survival.

“We are bound by religious duty to fight corruption. We consider ourselves in a battle that is no less sacred than the resistance’s battle against [Israeli] occupation,” Nasrallah said. “We want to prevent the economic and financial collapse, halt the theft of public funds and confront corruption in state administrations so that the state and the people can survive.”

“We in this battle ... want to achieve the goal and not to make political and media gains. We want to stop the waste [of public funds] and corrupt people and for the money looted from the state to return to the state,” he added.

Nasrallah said his party would not be deterred by “insults” against it over its anti-corruption drive. He called on those who accuse it of corruption to go to the judiciary.

Responding to critics of Hezbollah’s campaign, he said: “We will go on [with the campaign] to the end with a loud voice. You can expect anything from Hezbollah in this battle. It’s a battle of the nation’s survival and to save the state from the hands of corrupt people and thieves, no matter what the sacrifices are.”“Don’t count on our fatigue in this battle. We never felt tired in the 1982 resistance [against Israeli occupation],” he said.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s campaign did not aim to single out anyone in particular. “We did not accuse anyone [of corruption]. Former prime ministers and former finance ministers did not object [to Hezbollah’s campaign] except for one ... who felt that he was targeted in this and put himself inside the dock,” Nasrallah said, clearly referring to Siniora.

Siniora last week denied some $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending was illegal. He lashed out at Hezbollah, accusing the party of “political corruption” through establishing a mini-state within the Lebanese state.

Nasrallah underlined the importance of clearing the state’s financial accounts from 1993 to 2017, including the $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending, saying this was the key to carrying out reforms.

“From 1993 until 2017, there has been a suspicious and unhealthy situation in the state’s finances ... Financial reforms begin from there. This file is the normal gate to reforms,” he said. “We have said that the most important file, the key to financial reform, begins with the state budget.” He added that it was not Hezbollah that demanded an investigation into the issue of the $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending, “but Michel Aoun when he was the head of the Free Patriotic Movement” in 2013.

Nasrallah stressed that Hezbollah was “not competing with anyone in this battle [against corruption] and whoever works on this ... we are with them.”

Lebanon maintains one of the worst transparency rankings in the world, ranking 138th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s global ranking. Speaking in an interview with the Saudi Al-Arabiya channel Thursday night, Siniora reiterated that the $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending had been spent in a proper way and to meet the state’s needs.

Asked to comment on Hezbollah’s implicit accusations against him, Siniora said: “Hezbollah appears to be fighting corruption with fabricated accusations against me in order to divert attention from the verdict of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.”

The U.N-backed STL is expected to issue its verdict later this year in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in which four Hezbollah members have been indicted.

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