Lebanese lawyers file complaint over banker’s meeting with Netanyahu

More than a dozen Lebanese lawyers filed a complaint in Beirut against Antoun Sehnaoui after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, turning a private dinner into a legal fight over Lebanon’s anti-normalization rules. A Lebanese judge also issued an order that could lead to Sehnaoui’s arrest if he returns to Lebanon.

The complaint centers on a memorial dinner for the late U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham at the Four Seasons hotel in Washington, D.C. Sehnaoui co-hosted the event with former U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus, and Netanyahu and his wife, Sara Netanyahu, attended on July 27. In Lebanon, where normalization with Israel is officially prohibited, even a social encounter with a senior Israeli official can carry criminal exposure.

The filing accuses Sehnaoui of “contacting and dealing with the Israeli enemy” and of violating Lebanon’s boycott law. One account also said the complaint invokes Lebanon’s 1955 law banning contact with Israelis, a statute that can carry imprisonment. That legal backdrop explains why the dispute moved so quickly from a Washington dining room to the prosecutors’ office in Beirut.

Sehnaoui’s profile gives the case added weight at home. He is chairman and chief executive of Société Générale de Banque au Liban, better known as SGBL, and also heads FIDUS Wealth Management. In a country where banking elites already sit at the center of political scrutiny, a complaint tied to Israel raises the risk of reputational damage as well as legal trouble.

The controversy also did not begin with the dinner. On April 17, Morgan Ortagus described Sehnaoui as a “committed Zionist,” a remark that had already made him a combustible figure in Lebanon’s political conversation. With more than a dozen lawyers now pressing the case and a judge’s order hanging over him, the episode has become a test of how firmly Lebanon draws its red lines on contact with Israel, and how far those lines can reach when the encounter happens abroad.