Incident

A C-64 aircraft, reportedly loaded with gold, fell into the sea facing Lebanon’s shores on its way from Beirut to Kuwait on March 10, 1957. On February 27, 2012, one of the owners of the plane submitted a letter to PM Najib Mikati stating that he and his friend had established in the mid-1950s an airline called Lebanese International Airways (LIA), and that one of its aircrafts, which was heading to Kuwait carrying gold, crashed into seas of Lebanon following fire on board. The man requested permission to search for the remains of the plane and extract the gold without determining its amount or owners.

Search for plane wreckage

In agreement with the owners of the plane, Odyssey Marine Exploration requested the permission of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, to search for the remains of the plane. The ministry approved the request and then referred it to the Cabinet, which studied the case during its session on April 3, 2012 and decided to seek the opinion of the Legislation and Consultation Body at the Ministry of Justice, before granting Odyssey Marine Exploration the license.

The Legislation and Consultation Body demanded the following:

• Determining the origin of the plane and the nationality of its owners
• Determining the type, nature and date of manufacture of the gold to specify whether to classify it as a private or public archaeological property as different legislations are adopted for each case:

•  If the gold was considered part of the archeological heritage, the discoverer should, according to decision No. 166 dated November 7, 1933, report his find to the nearest public authority within 24 hours. The Directorate General of Antiquities grants the President 3 months, starting from the date he was handed or notified of the find, to buy it after a mutual agreement on the price with the discoverer. If the two parties fail to agree on the price, they shall appoint an arbitrator, who gains the approval of the High Commissioner and who is entitled to an irrevocable decision on the matter. In the event where the two parties fail to consent over the arbitrator, each of them shall appoint their own arbitrator, who would, along with the third arbitrator appointed by the High Commissioner, form a committee to settle the dispute by majority vote. Should the state forfeit its right to purchasing the artifact, the discoverer becomes the official owner.
•  If the gold was not considered part of the archeological heritage, it would succumb to the provisions of decision No. 1372 issued on April 13, 1922 and governing the objects falling to the sea water. In this case, the gold is subject to one of two legal options:

• If there was written evidence proving certain ownership rights of a person or a moral entity over the gold, the owner shall negotiate with the discoverer the division of shares, and the state is not entitled to any portion.
• If no ownership was proven over the gold, it shall be considered a state property due to its presence in its waters. In this case, the state shall agree with the discoverer over the process of portioning and the gold shall, according to the law, be deposited in Banque du Liban (BDL). However, law No. 41 dated September 24, 1986 prohibits the management of BDL gold assets, except by legislative texts. Therefore, the state shall persuade the discoverer to accept his share in tradable currencies, not gold.

As mentioned earlier, the law authorizes the search for gold and its extraction from waters within certain rules and limitations. However, the search process is still pending to date, waiting for the final approval especially that the matter reminds us of the role that the salvage ship has played following the Ethiopian plane crash in January 2010, when it was suspected of searching for gold rather than plane wreckage and victims. This leaves us wondering whether or not the search will pay off, knowing that no information is available as to the amount or the owners of the gold, not to mention that an exigent question arises in the same context: why have they slept on it for the past 50 years?