OCCRP reports a default civil judgment over a couple’s kidnapping and torture, giving them a binding award against the Lebanese party leader and three others.
A US district court in Florida has ordered Lebanese MP and former foreign minister Gebran Bassil and three co-defendants to pay $35 million to Lara and Elie Samaha, OCCRP reported on October 23. The court found the defendants liable for fraud, torture and civil conspiracy over the couple’s kidnapping and torture to force them to withdraw a lawsuit.
The order is a default final judgment: a binding civil ruling issued when defendants fail to respond to a lawsuit. It is not a criminal conviction or a verdict following a contested trial. Bassil heads Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement, an influential Christian political party.
The dispute began in 2015, when the Samahas sued in Beirut, alleging that politically connected relatives had stolen millions of dollars Lara was due to inherit. With that case delayed but still active, the couple filed a parallel US lawsuit on November 17, 2017.
The 2017 Florida lawsuit targeted Lebanese government officials who had obstructed Lara’s efforts to obtain her inheritance. The couple alleged that Bassil worked to secure its dismissal to protect one of those officials.
The Samahas travelled to Lebanon in 2019 hoping to settle the dispute. According to OCCRP’s account of the ruling, the court found that Bassil and the other defendants had lured them there under the pretext of settlement discussions, then orchestrated their kidnapping and torture to force the Florida case’s withdrawal.
In an October 16 statement issued after reports of the ruling, Bassil’s office denied any connection to the case or the parties involved. It objected to what it called a selective and fragmented presentation of the proceedings.
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Citing earlier proceedings, the office said a Florida lawsuit had been dismissed in March 2023 for lack of jurisdiction—the court’s authority to hear the case—and that Lebanon’s judiciary had ruled in Bassil’s favour against the Samahas. Those claims concerned earlier proceedings, rather than the present default judgment. Lara Samaha rejected the office’s account, saying the US court orders and final judgment were what mattered.
Bassil’s office has not said whether he plans to challenge the judgment. Lara Samaha told OCCRP that the couple would follow up on a related lawsuit in Lebanon, but declined to detail the next steps.
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