This investigation reveals how the shareholders of BLOM Bank, led by the Azhari family and Chairman Saad Azhari, transferred the bank’s profits abroad through a Luxembourg-based family holding company called Banorabe. Over the years, Banorabe accumulated a substantial stake in BLOM shares and relied almost entirely on this investment, including its shareholdings and deposits within the bank group.

Between 2010 and 2019, BLOM Bank transferred more than $250 million in dividends to Banorabe. In turn, Banorabe distributed at least $100 million to its shareholders, with the largest share going to the Azhari and Shaker families. The last major distribution took place in mid-2019, when BLOM transferred nearly $40 million in dividends to Banorabe for the 2018 fiscal year. Banorabe subsequently redistributed approximately $18 million to its shareholders, just months before Lebanon’s financial crisis erupted.

The contrast is stark. Journalist Mehdi Kreitem, a depositor whose funds were frozen at BLOM Bank and who sought access to them during a medical emergency in 2021, was handed an in absentia court ruling about a week ago on charges of “vandalism” at the bank. The ruling came less than ten days after an Israeli strike destroyed Kreitem’s home in Tyre, while he was still struggling to rebuild his life amid the ongoing attacks on Lebanon. The judgment stands in sharp contrast to the continued lack of accountability for bank chairmen and major shareholders. In an interview with Daraj, Kreitem summed up the situation: “There are three main issues in the country today: Israel’s war on Lebanon, the banking crisis and depositors’ funds, and the fact that I had to raise my voice inside a bank to recover my own deposit.”

At a time when BLOM Bank was generating substantial profits through the heavy placement of depositors’ funds at Banque du Liban and in sovereign debt instruments, Banorabe was also receiving steady and growing income from BLOM dividends and interest on its deposits with the bank. It then redistributed a significant portion of these revenues as generous payouts to its shareholders, foremost among them the Azhari family, Saad Azhari, and the Shaker family.

This is how the dual exposure, from Banque du Liban to BLOM, and from BLOM to Banorabe, translated into more than $100 million flowing into the pockets of the two families between 2010 and 2019, before the losses affecting the Lebanese asset underpinning this entire structure were laid bare. Will Azhari classify these figures as “myths” as well, as he did in his presentation titled “Facts and ‘Myths’ of the Lebanese Financial Crisis” at a session held at Saint Joseph University last year?

This investigation is part of the OpenLux project, a long-term cross-border investigative initiative coordinated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the French newspaper Le Monde. It is based on data collected from Luxembourg’s commercial register.

It is worth noting that BLOM Bank was the third-largest recipient of loans from Banque du Liban in 2019 and 2020, receiving a total of $1.522 billion ($32 million on September 30, 2019, and $1.022 billion on January 25, 2020). Only Bank Audi ($2.727 billion) and BankMed ($1.939 billion) received larger amounts on those same dates, according to a document reviewed by Daraj.

Neither Saad Azhari, Ahmad Shaker, nor BLOM Bank responded to Daraj’s questions before the publication of this investigation.

Banorabe  in Luxembourg

Banorabe was established in Luxembourg in 1979 and is one of the largest shareholders in BLOM Bank. As of September 2025, it held approximately 18.73% of the bank’s shares, according to BLOM’s website.

Banorabe is a Luxembourg-based family holding company created specifically to hold BLOM shares on behalf of its shareholders, primarily the Azhari and Shaker families. Its assets consist almost entirely of BLOM shares and deposits within the bank’s group, reflecting an almost exclusive reliance on a single institution. The bank itself openly acknowledges this relationship. In a brief note beneath its list of major shareholders, BLOM states that the shareholders of Banorabe  are essentially the same shareholders of BLOM Bank, with the exception of Bank of New York.

Between 2010 and 2019, Banorabe received more than $250 million in dividend payments from BLOM and distributed at least $100 million to its own shareholders. According to the financial statements reviewed for this investigation, the dividend distributions were as follows.

In 2017, Banorabe ’s stake in BLOM was valued at approximately $439 million, with substantial unrealized gains recorded in its fair value reserve. By 2018, however, those unrealized gains had begun to erode. The book value of Banorabe ’s stake in BLOM shares alone declined by around $91 million. Despite this, the company’s board approved an $18 million dividend distribution in mid-2019 from its 2018 profits, representing nearly half of that year’s earnings. In doing so, it continued extracting liquidity even as its core asset, BLOM shares, was losing a significant portion of its value on paper.

From 2010 to 2018, Banorabe functioned largely as an external profit channel linked to BLOM Bank. During that period, its stake in the bank grew from roughly 13% to nearly 19%, while almost all of its income came from BLOM dividends and interest earned on deposits placed with banks within the BLOM Group, totaling an estimated $231 million. Each year, Banorabe  received substantial cash dividends from BLOM, rising from around $9 million in 2010 to nearly $40 million in 2018, in addition to more than $1–2 million annually in interest income from its deposits. A significant portion of these funds was passed on to its shareholders through steadily increasing dividend distributions ranging from $6 million to $18 million per year. The peak came in 2018, when Banorabe  owned nearly one-fifth of BLOM. In mid-2019, it received approximately $40 million in dividends from the bank for the 2018 fiscal year and distributed the largest share of its own profits, amounting to $18 million, to shareholders.

After 2018, the picture shifted from profit extraction to loss absorption. In 2019, as Lebanon’s financial crisis began to unfold, the market value of Banorabe ’s stake in BLOM collapsed and the company recorded significant fair value losses. Yet it still approved and paid its largest cash distribution, transferring an additional $18 million to shareholders from BLOM’s 2018 profits. This raises a fundamental question: was the bank and its board of directors unaware, or at least unable to foresee, the possibility of the impending collapse just four months later when they approved such a substantial payout to shareholders, shortly before depositors’ funds became inaccessible?

From 2020 to 2024, and in compliance with Banque du Liban circulars issued during that period, BLOM ceased paying dividends to Banorabe altogether. Interest income on both Lebanese pounds and U.S. dollar deposits also declined. Banorabe began reflecting the crisis in its accounts through large expected-loss provisions on deposits, followed by substantial impairment charges on its BLOM shares. Even so, the full scale of the losses was not explicitly acknowledged until 2024, when the Luxembourg company reduced its capital from $50 million to approximately $12.6 million, effectively acknowledging that three-quarters of its capital had been wiped out by its exposure to BLOM.

What emerges is the picture of a concentrated, family-controlled offshore vehicle that extracted tens of millions of dollars from BLOM’s profits during the years of growth, including during the year the crisis erupted, before the underlying Lebanese asset on which it depended lost much of its real value. By 2024, Banorabe had shifted toward investments in foreign banks such as Standard Chartered, UBS Group, Barclays, HSBC Holdings, and KBC Group. The result was heavy losses on Banorabe ’s books, followed by a cleaner balance sheet in Luxembourg and a new portfolio of international investments, while retaining a significant stake in BLOM and preserving years of pre-crisis cash distributions in the hands of its principal owners. Meanwhile, depositors in Lebanon remained unable to access their savings.

While no definitive conclusion can be drawn, it is reasonable to suggest that the shareholders of BLOM Bank and Banorabe may have used the Luxembourg holding structure to generate and protect personal profits at a time when the bank’s depositors were being denied access to their own funds.

Based on the declared shareholding structure, the Azhari and Shaker families appear to have been the primary beneficiaries of Banorabe ’s distributions during the decade preceding Lebanon’s financial collapse.

Actionnaires Unis Holding Libanais SAL owns approximately 46.34% of Banorabe  and 1.83% of BLOM Bank. The company itself is owned roughly 51% by the Azhari family and 49% by the Shaker family. In addition, the Azhari family holds a direct stake in Banorabe  estimated at 8.32%, while the Shaker family directly owns around 20.34%.

When both direct and indirect holdings are taken into account, the Azhari family’s effective stake in Banorabe  stands at approximately 32%, compared with around 43% for the Shaker family. Together, the two families control nearly three-quarters of the company’s capital.

Based on the total dividends distributed by Banorabe  to its shareholders between 2010 and 2019, amounting to $108 million, the Azhari family’s share can be estimated at approximately $34–35 million, while the Shaker family’s share is estimated at around $46–47 million. In other words, tens of millions of dollars flowing out of BLOM through Banorabe  ultimately ended up in the accounts of the bank’s principal shareholder families, at a time when the value of the underlying asset, BLOM shares, was suffering mounting losses that were not fully disclosed until much later.

It is also worth recalling that Shaker Holding sold the remainder of its stake in BLOM Bank, consisting of 6.5 million common shares, to both Banorabe  and the bank itself for a total of $69.8 million in 2017. According to Business News, Banorabe  acquired five million of those shares for a total value of $53.5 million. Nevertheless, the Shaker family still owns 4.83% of the bank’s shares, according to data published on BLOM Bank’s website.

As for Banorabe  itself, records from Luxembourg’s commercial register show that in 2021 both Actionnaires Unis Holding Libanais S.A.L. and Sheikh Ghassan Shaker were removed from the company’s board of directors. Marwan Jaroudi, Samer Azhari, Saad Azhari, and Nouman Azhari remained on the board, while businessman Rami Hourieh and Amr Azhari joined as new directors.

BLOM Bank’s Financial Statements

According to BLOM Bank’s 2018 annual financial report, “the profit for the year 2018 was overstated by LBP 49.934 billion (2017: LBP 89.720 billion). In addition, the provision for risks and charges was overstated, while total equity as of December 31, 2018 was understated by LBP 160.945 billion (2017: LBP 337.177 billion).”

In its 2018 accounts, filed in June 2019, Banorabe  acknowledged a $73.8 million decline in its “financial fixed assets” item, representing its stake in BLOM, a $91.5 million reduction in its revaluation reserve, and a $70 million decrease in shareholders’ equity. Despite these losses, the company neither reduced its capital nor curtailed distributions. Instead, it recorded a substantial profit of $37.47 million and paid out $18 million in dividends. It was not until September 2024 that Banorabe  formally reduced its capital.

In other words, even after the value of its investment in BLOM had declined and it had incurred losses amounting to tens of millions of dollars, Banorabe  maintained its nominal capital and continued distributing significant dividends through 2018. It did not formally recognize the scale of these losses by reducing its capital to $12.58 million until September 2024.

While no definitive conclusion can be drawn, the warning signs were visible and available, particularly to bankers and Banque du Liban, indicating that a crisis was inevitable. In the specific case of BLOM Bank, these indicators were evident in the bank’s own financial statements. If BLOM’s profits were overstated, then Banorabe  appeared to be receiving dividends from a bank reporting healthy earnings, thereby providing a seemingly legitimate basis for maintaining high or increasing distributions to its own shareholders, even though actual profits were lower than publicly reported. As a result, Banorabe  continued raising its dividend distributions through 2018, channeling additional liquidity to the two families while the underlying asset supporting those distributions, BLOM shares, was already deteriorating in ways that were not fully visible because of the accounting treatments reflected in the bank’s financial statements.

By the end of 2019, however, BLOM Bank’s external auditor issued a qualified opinion, noting that “the profit for the year ended December 31, 2019 was overstated by LBP 160.945 billion, while opening retained earnings as of January 1, 2019 were understated by the same amount (2018: profit for the year 2018 overstated by LBP 49.934 billion; 2017: LBP 89.720 billion). The provision for risks and charges was overstated, and total equity as of December 31, 2018 was understated by LBP 160.945 billion (2017: LBP 337.177 billion).”

It is worth noting that Banorabe ’s Luxembourg auditor, Simaan Gholam & Co., is also among the auditors of both BLOM Bank and Banque du Liban, alongside Ernst & Young. Simaan Gholam & Co. did not respond to Daraj’s questions before the publication of this investigation.

The “Myths” That Continue to Haunt Azhari

At a session held by the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the Center for Legal Studies of the Arab World at Saint Joseph University in Lebanon on May 14, 2025, under the title “Financial Reform: Toward Accountability or General Amnesty?”, BLOM Bank Chairman and General Manager Saad Azhari presented the banking sector’s perspective.

To his credit, Azhari chose to appear before an audience he knew in advance would largely disagree with him. Yet the extent of his attempt to place sole responsibility for Lebanon’s financial collapse on the state was so striking that it prompted direct pushback from attendees and fellow speakers.

Azhari delivered a presentation titled “Facts and ‘Myths’ in the Lebanese Financial Crisis and a Proposal for Depositor Recovery.” In it, he sought to dismantle what he described as “myths” surrounding the role of the banking sector, before concluding with a proposal centered on the creation of a sovereign fund to repay depositors.

As part of this presentation, Azhari argued that banks were, to a large extent, victims of the financial crisis and therefore should not bear its cost through liquidation. Instead, he maintained that they should be given an opportunity to restructure and recover through what he described as a “fair and workable” distribution of Banque du Liban’s losses, namely the financial gap that is reflected in the deposits trapped within the banking system. He described this as a necessary and appropriate step that should be implemented as quickly as possible, before moving on to present his proposed mechanism for deposit recovery.

Azhari’s central proposal was the creation of a Deposit Recovery Fund (DRF) financed through four main sources. The first would be 30% of distributed bank profits. The second would draw on revenues generated by Banque du Liban assets, including the country’s gold reserves, Casino du Liban, Middle East Airlines, Intra Bank, and other holdings. The third would consist of a state contribution through a share of revenues generated by public assets, in addition to $2.5 billion for the recapitalization of Banque du Liban and a portion of future gas revenues. The fourth would come from what he described as “other potential sources,” including revenues from an exceptional tax on gains realized by borrowers who repaid their loans using “lollars” or Lebanese pounds at the official exchange rate.

Under the proposal, the fund would issue shares to depositors in proportion to the value of their deposits, with those shares later listed for trading on the Beirut Stock Exchange.

What stands out in Azhari’s proposal is that gold appears as the first state asset identified for potential monetization or collateralization in support of the fund. The proposal thus continues a narrative that presents the protection and recovery of banks as the gateway to restoring deposits, even if that requires leveraging some of the state’s most valuable public assets to achieve that objective.

BLOM Bank’s Profits from Transactions with Banque du Liban

A draft forensic audit prepared by Alvarez & Marsal in August 2023 shows that banks’ dealings with Banque du Liban were far from marginal. On the contrary, they represented one of the sector’s most significant sources of profit during that period.

In BLOM Bank’s case, the figures indicate that the bank generated substantial profits through leverage mechanisms, namely loans obtained from Banque du Liban against collateral in the form of Lebanese Treasury bills and term deposits.

According to Alvarez & Marsal’s estimates, BLOM earned between approximately LBP 236 billion and LBP 320 billion annually from loans backed by Treasury bills between 2017 and 2020. Beginning in 2018, the bank also generated additional annual profits ranging from roughly LBP 160 billion to LBP 283 billion from loans secured by term deposits.

This suggests that the relationship with Banque du Liban was not merely a source of liquidity for BLOM. It was also one of the bank’s most profitable business lines in the years leading up to the collapse.

Although these profits were denominated in Lebanese pounds, their significance lies not only in their post-collapse value, but also in the fact that they contributed to inflating the bank’s profits before the crisis. Those same profits were ultimately distributed to shareholders through dividends. During the Saint Joseph University session, however, Azhari dismissed this point, arguing that “these profits were in Lebanese pounds and their value was wiped out by the collapse of the Lebanese currency.”

Additional Companies

Banorabe ’s reports also mention a small and little-known subsidiary called Polygarnator S.A., with a capital of no more than $100,000, wholly owned by Banorabe . The accounts show that Banorabe  extended more than $1.4 million in loans to the company and subsequently booked provisions covering the full amount of those advances, effectively acknowledging that the subsidiary was unable to repay them. No significant public information is available regarding Polygarnator’s activities or role beyond what is disclosed in Banorabe ’s own financial notes.

The reports also refer to AZA Holding, which had been one of the bank’s major shareholders before it was liquidated in 2016. Following its liquidation, a significant portion of its BLOM shares was transferred directly to key shareholders, most notably members of the Azhari family.

According to Banorabe ’s own disclosures, the company received additional BLOM shares, both common shares and Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs), valued at approximately $25.9 million as part of the liquidation of AZA Holding, along with a relatively small cash payment. The transaction generated an accounting gain of roughly $2.4 million for Banorabe , further increasing its direct exposure to BLOM shares and reinforcing its role as the family’s central investment vehicle within the group’s ownership structure.