State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat has charged two judges with the crimes of accepting bribes and abuse of power.
According to NNA, the judges abused their authority “to impede the application of laws and interfere with the work of other judges.”
The state news agency did not reveal the identity of the judges but said that one of them currently occupies an important position in one of the Lebanese provinces while the other was expelled from the judiciary not long ago.
This is one step towards cracking down on corrupt judges in Lebanon’s notoriously flawed judicial system. The United States has also promoted efforts to create an independent judiciary in Lebanon through recent training sessions.
Judge Oueidat, who stepped down from the Beirut blast investigation citing a conflict of interest, recently dismissed Judge Ghada Aoun from cases of financial crimes.
He also summoned Lebanon’s Central Bank governor Riad Salameh for questioning over a Swiss inquiry into alleged money transfers linked to the Central Bank.
Judge Oueidat became unpopular last year when he launched a crackdown on all people whose social media posts were deemed, in a way or another, insulting to President Michel Aoun.
It resulted in a wave of arrests of Lebanese activists and non-activists who could no longer bear the devastating impact of the ongoing collapse and the stalling of the judiciary in solving the Beirut Blast crime.
