BEIRUT: A flurry of insults were traded between Beirut MP Mohammad Qabbani and Metn MP Nabil Nicholas Tuesday following charges by Nicholas that Qabbani was evading the payment of over LL15 million in electricity bills. Speaking to reporters at Parliament, Qabbani said claims by Nicholas that he owes electricity fees to Electricite du Liban do not reflect the facts.

The lawmaker said that in the 1990s an individual had rented a restaurant in a building he owns and all the electricity the tenant had used was illegally transferred to Qabbani’s bill.

“I filed a lawsuit in 2002 against the person who tried to make me pay the bills and against Electricite du Liban,” said Qabbani, who heads Parliament’s Transport, Public Works, Energy and Water Committee. According to a document provided by Qabbani, the tenant’s name was Rafik Qadi.

“As for the bills in arrears, during the operation of Qadi’s company they were transferred to the body tasked with collecting bills which prepared a collecting request of this value under the name of Qadi’s company in line with the lawsuit filed by MP Qabbani against this company,” Qabbani read from what he said was EDL’s internal mail. “And we asked the Beirut [EDL] department not to demand the payment of these bills from MP Qabbani.”

Qabbani, from former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future parliamentary bloc, said that Qadi bribed EDL’s bill collector, as the electricity was not cut off despite the fact that the bills were not paid for two years.

The MP said that after studying the issue, EDL cancelled its claims against Qabbani and seized Qadi’s properties.

Shortly before Qabbani’s remarks, Nicholas, from Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, presented a document showing Qabbani owed LL15,407,200 to EDL in addition to LL72,000 in penalties. The document bore the signature of the head of EDL’s Beirut Department.

“There are accumulated electricity bills worth LL16 million that Mohammad Qabbani owes,” Nicholas said. “They [EDL] started to send him notices in 2001 and in 2010 he paid LL900,000 and he still owes Electricite du Liban LL15 million as this paper indicates,” he told reporters at Parliament.

“The paper that was presented by the liar MP ... has the value of LL15,407,200 [without penalties] and here is a decision to confiscate the properties [of Qadi] with the [same] value of LL15, 479,200,” Qabbani hit back.

Qabbani said that he was being attacked by FPM officials because he was combating “theft” in the electricity sector. Energy Minister Gibran Bassil is Aoun’s son-in-law. “Nabil Nicholas ... obeys instructions ... the issue is that the father-in-law [Aoun] and the son-in-law [Bassil] consider me enemy No. 1 of the movement.”

Bassil has come under much criticism for his management of the country’s electricity sector.

“The reason is because I am precisely and strongly practicing legal oversight and preventing theft as much as I can in the energy and water sector,” Qabbani added.

“Would I launch such a fierce battle against corruption if I had done something illegal [in the electricity sector]?” he asked. “Wouldn’t I remain silent?”