| Ex-minister slams Cabinet over cellular deal Hadi Khatib
Daily Star staff
Issam Naaman, a staunch opponent of cellular companies in
the governments of both Prime Ministers Salim Hoss and Rafik Hariri, issued a statement
Friday identifying five instances in which he claims the government violated previously
adopted positions vis-a-vis settlement negotiations with cellular operators LibanCell and
Cellis.
The Cabinet on Thursday sought to bring the auction date for the two cellular licenses
closer by approving a $178.5 million payout, $60.48 million of which will go to LibanCell
and $118.06 million of which will go to Cellis. The Cabinet also suspended collection
efforts awaiting international arbitration in Geneva for Cellis and in Lebanon for
LibanCell.
Naaman, the former telecommunications minister in the Hoss government, first blamed the
Cabinet for denying the government $1.2 billion in revenues when it suspended collection
on $600 million from each company and pledged not to collect any of the 2000, 2001 and
eight months of 2002 amounts the companies owed the state, saying, “these are amounts
well documented in two separate reports from the auditing department.”
Naaman then tackled the Cabinet’s decision to refer the dispute to an independent
arbitrator “despite the Shura Council’s decision to scrap the arbitration clause
in the contract, which is an indication of the lack of respect the current government
holds for the judiciary and its rulings.”
Naaman said the Cabinet decided to approve the payment of $178.5 million to both cellular
companies for the cost of running the network on behalf of the government. The money also
covers the net value of the companies’ networks, which in September became government
property, “but since the companies owe over $1 million, the right thing to do would
have been to negotiate or wait for a settlement.”
Naaman added that the decision to settle the amounts using Treasury bills with a
10-percent surcharge “contradicts the results of the ‘Paris II’ donors
conference, through which Lebanon was able to secure low-interest loans and which had a
positive effect on local interest rates.”
“Is there any explanation besides the intentional enrichment
of the cellular operators at the expense of the Treasury, which is burdened with a $1
billion debt?” Naaman asked.
Finally, Naaman criticized the Cabinet’s decision to guarantee the Treasury-bill
payments from the operating revenues of the cellular operation “when the Cabinet
denied the Telecommunication Ministry’s request for a bank guarantee from the
cellular companies in return for suspending collection in favor of arbitration.”
Naaman said he would talk about these violations in detail during a television interview
this Friday on New Television’s The Week in an Hour talk show.
Zahle MP George Kassardji said the “sharing of spoils” of the current government
evident in the “Solidere file, the Sukleen file, administrative and judicial
appointments and the distribution of economic, diplomatic, security and other political
booties” is also clear in relation to the “cellular file.”
Kassardji said the political bickering that took place last spring was not intended to
protect state or public interests “but was … aimed at plundering hundreds of
millions of dollars by responsible officials.”
He reiterated Naaman’s complaints that Thursday’s Cabinet cellular decisions
disregarded the Shura Council’s decision to scrap arbitration from the contract,
“which means that, despite Hariri’s assurances that no political conditions were
attached to Paris II, it was clear that the premier had promised to protect France
Telecom’s interests,” referring to the current manager of Cellis.
Kassardji also was critical of the government’s failure to collect $600 million, the
penalties determined by the auditing department for the alleged companies’ violation
of their contracts.
Meanwhile, the Higher Council for Privatization issued a statement in response to the
Ad-Diyar newspaper article describing the Cabinet decision as “a political
reconciliation that wasted $600 million in public funds, as a result of scandalous
freezing of the orders to collect.”
The statement said that “the suspension is … not an abandonment of said
amounts.”
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