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BEIRUT: The Lebanese Parliament voted by a majority of 99 out of 128 members on Wednesday to lift the immunity of MP George Bouchikian, paving the way for a civil prosecution on charges of embezzlement, forgery and extortion.

The charges are based on complaints filed by several factory owners accusing Bouchikian of committing the offences during his tenure as minister of industry in former Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government.

In a separate vote, 88 members approved the referral of former telecommunications ministers Boutros Harb, Nicolas Sehnaoui and Jamal Jarrah to an investigative committee over documented allegations of “mismanaging tens of millions of dollars in building leases and contracting operations.”

Public Prosecutor Jamal Hajjar submitted a formal request to the General Secretariat of Parliament to lift Bouchikian’s parliamentary immunity.

Hajjar questioned Bouchikian as a witness in late June but the former minister left Lebanon for Canada shortly afterwards, confirmed in a statement given two days ago. He is not expected to return now his parliamentary immunity has been removed.

A judicial source told Arab News: “Bouchikian was questioned following testimony from factory owners who alleged that he, through his office manager and private driver, accepted payments between $50,000 and $70,000 for each work permit application submitted.”

According to the source, the investigating judge at the time “lacked the authority to arrest Bouchikian or confiscate his passport due to his parliamentary immunity. It appears he took advantage of this loophole to leave the country, anticipating that formal charges were imminent.”

The source added: “Four employees have been detained and charged in connection with the case, while Bouchikian’s office manager and driver went into hiding.”

This is the first time parliamentary immunity has been lifted since 2000, when it was stripped from MP Chahe Barsoumian over a corruption case related to oil storage contracts.

The move came during former president Emile Lahoud’s high-profile campaign against corruption and waste. This largely targeted officials from the era of his predecessor, Elias Hrawi, and Rafik Hariri, the late prime minister who led most of Hrawi’s governments.

Barsoumian was eventually acquitted following Hariri’s assassination in 2005 and the election of a new parliament dominated by opponents of the previous establishment. In 2004, a parliamentary investigative committee concluded that “the acts attributed to Barsoumian were not sufficiently proven, and there was no legal basis for indictment or prosecution.”

Meanwhile in its legislative session, the Lebanese parliament summoned former telecommunications ministers Harb, Sehnaoui, and Jarrah. The three appeared in order to submit legal defenses against allegations of administrative and financial irregularities raised by the Financial Judiciary, which had formally requested their referral to the Supreme Council for the Trial of Presidents and Ministers. All MPs opposed the treatment of the ministers as a single case.

The case of the three ministers is linked to several issues, including that of the Kassabian building, which was leased by MIC 2. Rental fees for the first four years totaled $10 million, but the company did not benefit from it due to its unsuitability. The state is still paying the rent.

The second case concerns the squandering of millions of dollars by using the revenues of the two mobile phone companies to fund various social activities.

In 2022, a group of MPs filed an indictment against the three ministers in the telecommunications case, referring them to the Supreme Council for the Trial of Presidents and Ministers.

Harb, a prominent figure in Lebanon’s sovereign bloc, told the parliament his conscience was clear “because I did not breach the law, but rather preserved public funds and stopped waste, and I am fully prepared to cooperate with any investigative committee formed.”

Sehnaoui told MPs: “My conscience is clear, and I was the one who negotiated with the owner of the building that was being rented to unify the workplace of Touch Mobile employees at the lowest price.”

He also claimed Zain International inspected the building and stated it was suitable.

“It was later discovered that it could not support the very heavy equipment on its roof and needed modifications. How could I know that it was not if the international company stated otherwise?” he said.

Jarrah stated: “The Financial Public Prosecutor did not request any documents or papers to prove our statements regarding the funding of social activities. When we left his office, we heard about our accusations in the media.”

JERUSALEM: More than 100 aid organizations and human rights groups warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza, as the United States said its top envoy was heading to Europe for talks on a possible ceasefire and aid corridor.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where more than two million people are facing severe shortages of food and other essentials after 21 months of conflict.

But it denied blocking supplies, saying that 950 trucks’ worth of aid were in Gaza waiting for international agencies to collect and distribute.

“We have not identified starvation at this current point in time but we understand that action is required to stabilize the humanitarian situation,” an unnamed senior Israeli security official was quoted as saying by the Times of Israel.

On the ground, the Israeli military said it was operating in Gaza City and the north, and had hit dozens of “terror targets” across the Palestinian territory.

Gaza’s civil defense agency told AFP that Israeli strikes killed 17 people overnight, including a pregnant woman in Gaza City.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operations in late May — effectively sidelining the longstanding UN-led system.

A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away.”

The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.

The United States said its envoy Steve Witkoff will head to Europe this week for talks on Gaza and may then visit the Middle East.

Witkoff comes with “a strong hope that we will come forward with another ceasefire as well as a humanitarian corridor for aid to flow, that both sides have in fact agreed to,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

Even after Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade in late May, Gaza’s population is still suffering extreme scarcities.

Israel says humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid.

GHF said the United Nations, which refuses to work with it, “has a capacity and operational problem” and called for “more collaboration” to deliver life-saving aid.

COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said nearly 4,500 trucks entered Gaza recently, with flour, baby food and high-calorie food for children.

But it said there had been “a significant decline in the collection of humanitarian aid” by international organizations in the past month.

“This collection bottleneck remains the main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip,” it added.

Aid agencies, though, said permissions from Israel were still limited and coordination to move trucks to where they are needed — and safely — was a major challenge.

The humanitarian organizations said warehouses with tons of supplies were sitting untouched just outside the territory, and even inside, as they were blocked from delivering the goods.

“Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires, only to wake up to worsening conditions,” the signatories said.

“It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage,” they added.

“The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access.”

The head of Gaza’s largest hospital said Tuesday that 21 children had died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory over the previous three days.

Mediators have been shuttling between Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Doha since July 6 in search of an elusive truce, with expectations that Witkoff would join the talks as they entered their final stages.

More than two dozen Western governments called on Monday for an immediate end to the war, saying suffering in Gaza had “reached new depths.”

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,219 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.