BEIRUT, Lebanon, October 20 (Lebanonwire) -- The mysterious Bank Al-Madina's Executive Director Rana Qoleilat, who spent more than a year in jail for falsifying documents in an embezzlement case worth millions of Dollars before paying a series of bails that allowed her to escape and then disappear, was now located in Egypt under a different name, daily Al Mustaqbal said Thursday.

Seven months removed from a money laundering investigation tied to the former Premier Rafik Hariri’s probe, involving payoffs by Syrian officials to a number of MPs and media representatives, and despite several arrest warrants, Qoleilat had been on the run until the daily discovered that she was hiding in Cairo under the assumed name of Fakhriya Said Mhanna.

Al Mustaqbal discovered that Qoleilat is living with her former Roumieh prison mate Annette Al-Imad in an apartment on the seventh floor of Al-Rayan building, on Al-Ajouzat street in Cairo.

The daily said security forces have now a complete picture of Qoleilat’s escape (or smuggling), with information indicating that she left Lebanon a short period after being released on bail and entered Syria last April 1st along the northern border in AL-Arida area, accompanied by Wissam Shaaban, Mohammad Qandil and Tony Al-Imad (brother of her apartment mate in Cairo) to facilitate her exit.

The daily said Tony had allegedly helped Qoleilat secure a forged passport in the name of Mhanna, born 1934 (although Qoleilat was born in 1963) and used it to cross Syria into Turkey and then air-born to Cairo, where the fugitive got a residency permit for one year, based on yet another British document she exhibited at the Egyptian customs.

Qoleilat had until February 2004 enjoyed the protection of former Syrian Army Intelligence head in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaleh in collaboration with then Syrian-affiliated security and judiciary apparatus, the daily said, adding that the political cover kept her from ever being seriously implicated despite her arrest on several occasions.

Her last release came on March 17th three days after the March 14th demonstrations (a million Lebanese gathered at Freedom Square to rebuke Syrian dominance in Lebanese affairs and ask for Hariri’s true killers), which tipped conspirators that the Lebanese-Syrian security regime was not going to survive, the daily said.

Qoleilat was first arrested on November 2003 following an arrest warrant by judge Hatem Madi who was threatened not to pursue the matter and was subsequently punished when former pro-Syrian Public Prosecutor Adnan Addoum ordered the removal of his security detail and later demoted him to inferior duties in secondary judicial courts, the daily said.

Al Mustaqbal added that Madi later received threatening letters warning him to release Qoleilat from jail, which he did at a later stage.

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