Central Bank to manage
Creditbank temporarily

Names Muhammad Baasiri, former Deputy Governor, as director

The Higher Banking Commission of the Central Bank (BDL) has appointed Muhammad Baasiri, a former BDL Deputy Governor, as temporary director of Creditbank.

Baasiri will be in charge of the office of the bank’s board of directors and will also temporarily replace its Chairman and General Manager who is currently Tarek Khalife.

The Higher Banking Commission didn’t set a time period for the task assigned to Baasiri, according to a person familiar with the matter. The source said that the decision was the result of conflicting viewpoints between Creditbank and the Banking Control Commission (BCCL), another BDL body which carries out its supervisory functions as an independent entity but in close coordination with the Governor of the Central Bank.

At the end of 2019, Creditbank had total assets of $4.2 billion and a shareholders’ equity of nearly $381 million. It said in 2022 in response to media reports that it increased its capital by $56 million in 2020 and 2021 and its equity by LL700 billion in 2022 in compliance with the requirements of BDL and BCCL.

The other banks that were put by BDL under the control of temporary directors were Federal Bank of Lebanon, Al Baraka Bank-Lebanon, and Banque de Crédit National (BCN). The decision was announced in the last quarter of 2022. Saad Andary, a former BDL Deputy Governor, was put in charge of Federal Bank. Charbel Abdallah Moubarak took the helm of Al Baraka. Samir Hammoud, former Chairman of BCCL, took charge of BCN, but stepped down later on and was replaced by Rodolphe Atallah.