@loubnaniTO @Tayyar9 @JB81 @fidelio @lebanese1 @Dynamis @vegojimbo @StopWorryingLoveTheBomb @Eliassss This is a Wikileaks cable from 2007.
Highlights:
Polchief called on Dr. Nabil Tawil, a cardiac surgeon uniquely placed in Lebanese politics as, simultaneously, a confidant of Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader Michel Aoun and a childhood friend of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.
Jumblatt and Aoun were to meet at Tawil's home, for example, in December 2005 but Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil allegedly leaked the plan to the press, embarrassing both.
Tawil said he brokered a telephone call from Jumblatt to Aoun in September 2006 in which Jumblatt apologized for the Druze dispossession of Christians in the Chouf. It was a promising start, but Bassil again scotched the reconciliation by announcing and hastily organizing a Conference on the Displaced to highlight Jumblatt's role in defrauding funds dedicated to compensate Chouf Christians. This made Jumblatt furious and pushed any reconciliation farther into the future.
Aoun is looking for a way out, Tawil said, but cannot simply leave the opposition movement. If Aoun has not accepted a compromise deal with the government up to now, Tawil speculated, the only interpretation is that the General is being controlled by some unknown party. Polchief asked whether Tawil meant that Aoun was being blackmailed, perhaps by the party or parties which had provided his suspiciously lavish party funding, so evident in FPM's vast media campaigns and Aoun's security force among other things. Tawil and Zakka nodded affirmatively. (Note: Tawil did not repeat to us what he allegedly told Jumblatt recently -- that Aoun was in the habit of receiving "bags of money" from Syrian or Iranian sources. His clear implication, however, was that Aoun was deep in illicit financing. End Note.)
GEBRAN BASSIL -- A CORRUPTING INFLUENCE --------------------------------------- 7. (S) The General does not know every financial decision that has been taken on his behalf, Tawil averred. However his son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, is in the political conflict "for the money" Zakka claimed, noting Bassil's luxurious lifestyle. He shared with us, as an example, that Bassil's armored Audi car was a gift from opposition Marada Party leader Suleiman Franjieh, who got the car from his family friend Bashar Asad. 8. (S) Despite Aoun's obvious devotion to Bassil, based on making his daughter Chantal (pregant anew, Zakka informed us) happy, Bassil is universally reviled within the FPM. Still, Aoun brings Bassil into every meeting he has, even those the interlocutor asks to make "private." (Tawil is an exception, he claims -- as an old friend, he rates Aoun one-on-one.)
ORANGE TV MONEY LAUNDERING -------------------------- 10. (S) By his own account, Bassil masterminded the FPM's launch of its Orange TV share offering in October, and he then boasted to Polchief at the time that the public response was overwhelming. Even before the offering, a well-resourced advertising campaign had papered Beirut with orange billboards to drum up buyers for the stock's low-priced shares. There are individual buyers among FPM's rank-and-file, Tawil admitted. But the largest shareholder in Orange TV is Shia MP Abbas Hashem, a member of Aoun's parliamentary bloc known to be Hizballah's agent within the bloc. Tawil and Zakka were skeptical that Orange TV's fundraising success could be attributed to individual investors alone.
en.annahar.com