Electricity godfathers rule billion dollar Lebanon market

byHabib Battah
Sep 12, 2011

credit: The Godfather, Paramount Pictures

The Corleones would be envious. Lebanese generator owners are racking up tax free millions every month as the government looks the other way. But it can be a jungle out there. Step on someone else’s turf and you could wind up beaten, hospitalized or shot–all for the right price. See my latest piece in The Daily Star for an inside look at the underworld of gray market Lebanese electricity.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.

2 comments

Bash says:

Oct 23, 2011 at 5:07 pm

Having problems with electricity in Lebanon?? This: http://otherpower.com/ will help you..
Long live freedom of information! lol

It’s time to break those power mafias once and for all.

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