BEIRUT: Lebanon’s North Africa Commercial Bank froze an undisclosed amount of assets belonging to the Libyan regime, according to local media reports Tuesday.
Speaking to The Daily Star, the bank would not deny or confirm that it carried out the measures mentioned in the reports
An-Nahar newspaper said that at the behest of the U.N., the Central Bank instructed NACB to freeze any assets belonging to the Libyan government, pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973.
The two resolutions stipulate that member states should freeze funds, other financial assets and economic resources on their territories which are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the Libyan regime.
“I can’t tell you whether we have [frozen accounts] or not,” Naji al-Halabi, assistant to the general manager at NACB told The Daily Star, adding that revealing such information would violate banking secrecy policy.
“Whether this is true or not, there is a special investigative commission that can freeze accounts of people that might [even] have nothing to do with Libya … If there is a decision to freeze any account, we would, but that does not affect the bank,” Halabi said.
The news comes a week after reports that the Lebanese-Canadian Bank froze assets of former Tunisian first lady Leila Trabolsi and some of her relatives in an apparent bid to seize cash belonging to recently deposed Arab rulers.
In the An-Nahar report, the paper also said that the bank had ceased its commercial activities.
Halabi denied that the bank’s activities had been frozen since February when the first resolution was passed and ridiculed the news report by An-Nahar.
“We have normal operations in terms of our credits, money transfer, accounts, clients and everything else. [The news reports] is baseless,” Halabi said.
Sources told An-Nahar that a further investigation was under way to ascertain whether there were any remaining accounts for the Libyan regime in banks in Lebanon.
Founded in Beirut in 1973, “North Africa Commercial Bank S.A.L” was formerly named “The Arab Libyan Tunisian Bank SAL” due to the fact that the two main shareholders were Libyan Foreign Bank-Libya and Société Tunisienne de banque – Tunisia. The bank’s name was changed in December 1989 as above, after the Tunisian shares were sold to Libyan Arab Foreign Bank and to Lebanese shareholders.
NACB was first established in 1973 under the name The Arab Libyan Tunisian Bank SAL when the two main shareholders were Libyan Foreign Bank-Libya and Société Tunisienne de banque – Tunisia.
After the Tunisian shares were sold to Libyan Arab Foreign Bank and to Lebanese shareholders, the bank became NACB in 1989, with 99.54 percent of the shares belonging to Tripoli-based Libyan Foreign Bank, 0.45 percent to Beirut-based Demoreco Holding S.A.L and 0.01 percent to member of the board of directors.
NACB has a total paid-up capital of LL128,599,170,000, according to the NACB website and operates as a commercial bank offering retail and commercial services and products.