According to the Special Investigation Commission (SIC)’s 2019 annual report, the total number of suspected money laundering-related cases in Lebanon attained 637 in the year 2019, 80.03% of which were local cases and 19.97% were foreign. The SIC investigated 552 cases in 2019, while 85 cases are still pending. In this context, the Lebanese judicial authorities ordered the lifting of banking secrecy on 55 cases, of which 48 are local and 7 foreign. It is worth noting that Lebanon was removed from the list of non-cooperating countries in the fight against money laundering since the year 2002, thanks to the procedures implemented by the Lebanese government and Banque Du Liban to control flows within banks.

The following section depicts the evolution of the received money laundering-related cases in Lebanon over the 2009-2019 decade:

The report also uncovered that cases related to “Forgery” accounted for the bulk of money laundering-related cases, constituting 15.74% (99 cases) of total cases in 2019, followed by “Cybercrime” (92 cases <14.63%>) and “Fraud” (54 cases <8.59%>), only to name a few. The section below captures the nature of money laundering-related cases, along with the geographical distribution of Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) in the year 2019:

It is obvious that Beirut hosted the majority (51.80%; 274 STRs) of Suspicious Transaction Reports, followed by Mount Lebanon (30.62%), the South (6.43%), North (6.24%) and Bekaa (4.91%) regions.