Former head of Lebanese central bank in court on embezzlement charges

Protesters who lost savings in financial crisis demonstrated outside court as Riad Salameh pleaded not guilty

The former head of Lebanon's central bank, Riad Salameh, appeared in court on Monday for the first time since he was arrested last week on charges of embezzling up to $42m (32m) of public funds.

Monday's hearing is the latest in the long saga of Salameh, once vaunted as a financial wizard who earned Lebanon its reputation as the Switzerland of the Middle East" during his 30-year long tenure. He has since fallen into disrepute and is suspected of engineering a country-wide Ponzi scheme that caused Lebanon's 2019 financial meltdown and its five-year-long economic crisis.