The Lebanese state owns a plot of land numbered 4023 in the Deir El-Ahmar real estate zone, Qada’a Baalbeck. The plot has a surface area of 19,525 square meters of which 6000 square meters have been parceled out making up a new plot numbered 2214. According to the real estate certificate, the new plot of land is said to be rocky and to have construction on it. 

 

In 1991, the Maronite Archdiocese of Baalbeck-Deir El-Ahmar filed a request to buy parcel no. 2214 where it had reportedly built a large monastery dozens of years ago. On May 20, 2011, the archdiocese reiterated its previous request, asserting that it had erected a monastery on state-owned property. The monastery consists of a ground floor and five other floors including 20 corridors, 17 salons, 123 rooms, 66 bathrooms as well as kitchens and warehouses. 

 

In 2012, a committee from the Ministry of Finance priced each meter of the plot at LBP 15,000, without observing the value of the facility set up by the archdiocese or imposing the due penalties deriving from the fact that the monastery was established prior to 1963, as per the municipality’s attestation, and thus profits from the law on the settlement of construction violations issued in 1994. Another committee estimated the price once again at LBP 15,000 in 2014, without introducing any alterations to the initial estimation despite the increase in real estate prices over two and a half years. Accordingly, the total value of the plot was set at LBP 90,000,000, a trivial amount given the fact that there is already construction on the land. 

 

The Audit Court refused to approve the sale without the consent of the Cabinet on account that there is a construction violation on this plot. Yet, the Cabinet gave its go-ahead and the transaction was geared towards completion. Thus, the ownership of 6000 square meters was handed down from the state to the Maronite archdiocese of Deir el-Ahmar, despite the latter’s encroachments on state property.