Lebanon’s Audit Bureau questions minister over Beirut airport contract scandal

Lebanon will construct a $122 million terminal at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport to be operated by a leading Irish airport company when it’s completed in four years, officials said Monday.

The contract was questioned by Lebanon’s Audit Bureau on Friday . It sent a memo to caretaker Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamiya, asking him for information about a project to construct a new terminal at the Rafik Hariri International Airport, following an uproar in the country over the issue.

In the memo, the Bureau asks Hamiya whether the public procurement law, the public-private partnership law and other laws have been respected. It also asks whether a public tender had been organized and whether structural, environmental and economic studies had been conducted.

Last June Hamiya, who represents Speaker Nabih Berri in the cabinet ( a close ally of Hezbollah) announced that Lebanon will soon launch an international tender for the construction of a new terminal at the country’s only international airport in Beirut,

But Hamiya told reporters that the cost will be $70 million

All of a sudden the price jumped to $122 million dollars which prompted the uproar.

Many Lebanese MPS questioned the issue

Meanwhile the head of the Public Procurement Authority, Jean Elliyeh announced that “the airport tender file will be in the hands of the relevant inspection authorities at the beginning of next week.”

Elliyeh had recently announced that the Authority was not aware of how the project was contracted without a public tender.

According Hamiya the Irish company (DAA) that was contracted to build the terminal will also end up operating it once completed which added to the uproar and confusion in Lebanon

Flagrant violation

MP Mark Daou , one of the newly elected reform and change MPS commented , in a statement on social media, that “contracting Beirut Airport by mutual consent is a flagrant violation of the Public Procurement Law, which nullifies any other provision that contradicts the principle of transparency of tenders and auctions through the Public Procurement Authority,” considering that “what the Ministry of Works has done contracting for more than 25 years a building and real estate within the Beirut airport campus is in itself a huge violation ”?

Source Lebanese media