According to the Special Investigation Commission (SIC)’s 2020 annual report, the total number of suspected money laundering-related cases in Lebanon attained 463 in the year 2020, 81.21% of which were local cases and 18.79% were foreign. The SIC investigated 384 cases in 2020, while 79 cases are still pending. In this context, the Lebanese judicial authorities ordered the lifting of banking secrecy on 29 cases, of which 26 are local and 3 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 2010-2020 decade:

The report also uncovered that cases related to “Forgery” & “Fraud” accounted both for the bulk of money laundering-related cases, each constituting 11.85% (52 cases) of total cases in 2020, followed by “Cybercrime” (47 cases <10.71%>) and “Corruption” (34 cases <7.74%>), 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 2020:

It is obvious that Beirut hosted the majority (58.82%; 150 STRs) of Suspicious Transaction Reports, followed by Mount Lebanon (22.75%), the North & Akkar (7.45%), the South (6.27%) and Bekaa (4.71%) regions.