Salah Ezzedine (born in 1962 in

South Lebanon Southern Lebanon () is the area of Lebanon comprising the South Governorate and the Nabatiye Governorate. The two entities were divided from the same province in the early 1990s. The Rashaya and Western Beqaa districts, the southernmost distr ...

) is a Lebanese businessman who is accused and arrested for running a

pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a business model which, rather than earning money (or providing Return on investment, returns on investments) by sale of legitimate product (business), products to an end consumer, mainly earns money by recruiting new members ...

. He had supposedly investments in oil, publishing, metals and television, and his businesses spread out from the Gulf to Africa.

Career

Before the fraud scandal occurred, he was known for his generosity and had built a stadium and largely financed a mosque for his hometown of Maaroub, Lebanon. He was known as the owner of Dar el-Hadi, a publishing house that published books on

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

and on religious themes based in the Shiite neighborhood of

Dahieh Dahieh (, ) is a predominantly Shia Muslim suburb in the south of Beirut, in the Baabda District of Lebanon. It has a minority of Sunni Muslims, Christians, and a Palestinian refugee camp with 20,000 inhabitants. It is a residential and commerc ...

, a stronghold of Hezbollah, and Al Mustathmir, a money management financial institution.

Fraud

Ezzedine's close ties to

led many Lebanese Shiite investors to invest with him, even though he did not show them any paperwork. He named two of his businesses after the son of the Hezbollah leader,

Hassan Nasrallah Hassan Nasrallah (, ; 31 August 196027 September 2024) was a Lebanese cleric and politician who served as the third secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militia, from 1992 until his assassination in 2024. Bor ...

. Hundreds of Lebanese sold land or took money out of their retirement savings, joined by well-off investors, to invest hundreds of millions of dollars with him, as he promised annual returns of as much as 80%. In the ensuing debacle, financial downfall and declaring of his bankruptcy, Lebanese investors, mostly from the Shia community, lost hundreds of million dollars. Amounts involved vary between $700 million to 1.2 billion dollars was lost by Lebanese investors Hezbollah security officers arrested Ezzedine on his way to the airport as he attempted to flee and made him transfer his remaining assets to Hezbollah before they turned him over to the Lebanese authorities. Bankers said it was the largest fraud of its kind that Lebanon had ever seen. Ezzedine was charged with fraud and fraudulent embezzlement, a crime punishable by 15 years in prison, distributing invalid checks, and violating Lebanese fiscal laws in September 2009, and was jailed."Billion-Dollar Pyramid Scheme Rivets Lebanon,"
''The New York Times''."Prosecutors Charge Lebanese Financier,"
''The Wall Street Journal''.

References

1962 births Living people Confidence tricksters Financial company founders Financial scandals Lebanese Shia Muslims Lebanese businesspeople Money managers People from Tyre District Pyramid and Ponzi schemes 21st-century Lebanese businesspeople {{Lebanon-business-bio-stub