March 26, 2019 Request from Case Authority Lawyer to the Ministry of Public Works and Transport
Omar Wafik Tarabah
Lebanese State Lawyer
Civil and Arbitration Cases
Doctorate in Law
To HH Head of the Case Authority at the Ministry of Justice
Petition
Filed by
Case No.: 137/2014 Beirut, March 26, 2019
Reference No.: 1019/2018
Petitioner: Lawyer Omar Tarabah Lawyer of the Lebanese State
Re: Seeks referral for the third time to the Ministry of Public Works and Transport to implement the preliminary decision issued by the Beirut Enforcement Department on October 15, 2018 in the case involving the ship RHOSUS, ruling to deposit the advance due to the expert, seven hundred thousand Lebanese lira, in the executive transaction file Ref. No. 1019/2018.
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- On April 17, 2018, the Lebanese State filed with the Beirut Enforcement Department a request to sell a shipwreck and the materials that were on board of the ship and which were unloaded due to their danger and deposited in Hangar No. 12 affiliated to the Gestion et Exploitation du Port de Beyrouth (GEPB), pursuant to a decision issued by the Judge of Urgent Matters in Beirut. The request was recorded with the Enforcement Department under Reference Number 1019/2018.
- On October 15, 2018, a preliminary decision was issued to sell the wreckage of the ship RHOSUS at public auction. This was to be preceded by appointment of the expert Fouad al-Shaar and tasking him to inspect the said shipwreck and appraise it, provided that the implementing body provide an advance in the amount of seven hundred thousand Lebanese lira for the expert’s fees.
(Attached is a copy of the Preliminary Decision, Document No. 1)
- The GEPB was notified of the decision, and instead of depositing the advance of seven hundred thousand Lebanese lira pursuant to the said decision, it referred to us a letter stating that it was retaining the amount and that the expert should subsequently produce an invoice for the amount to the administration.
- The administration’s letter was attached to the executive transaction file and the expert was notified of its content.
- The expert has not started performing the task, and we received a call from the Beirut Enforcement Department to inform us that, pursuant to the Enforcement Department’s decision to provide an advance of LBP 700,000 to the expert, the administration is duly required to deposit the aforementioned amount so that the expert completes his task and the advance decision is sufficient to deposit the amount. The issue is not related to buying goods such as to require an invoice from the expert, and the body that decides the expert’s advance is the Enforcement Department. This requires the administration to deposit the advance amount in the executive transaction file in order to proceed with implementation.
We sent an urgent letter to the administration recorded with the court registrar dated January 9, 2019 asking the administration to deposit the advance amount in the executive transaction