Radio Orient, the ultimate flagship of the Hariri clan media empire, is under the control of a UAE holding company.

13 avril 2026Libnanews Translation Bot

The end of an enchanted parenthesis

Radio Orient, the ultimate flagship of what was once the Hariri media empire, named after Saudi Lebanese Prime Minister and billionaire Rafic Hariri, was ceded in 2025 to a holding company of the United Arab Emirates, putting an end to an enchanted 32-year period, during which the Hariri dynasty dominated Lebanese political life, and largely influenced French diplomacy towards the Arab World, especially in the time of the duo Jacques Chirac-Rafic Hariri.

The new owner and now sole shareholder of Radio Orient is « RO Holding Limited (United Arab Emirates) located in the emirate of Ras al Khaimah and registered as « International Corporate Center ICC 202 40 500.

Radio Orient was the sole shareholder of the company REGROUPEMENT DES RADIOS MUSULMANES DE FRANCE. Radio-Orient is a simplified share company with a capital of 175,000 euros, whose head office is 98 avenue Victor Hugo, in Clichy (92110), registered in the Nanterre Business and Company Register under number 339 765 786;

It has not been possible to know whether the transfer has taken place in full of a debt of the heir of the clan or in recognition of the hospitality offered to Saad Hariri by the United Arab Emirates in order to help him to recover from his political and financial collapse.

But the fact is that the transfer of Radio Orient to a holding company of the Emirates could significantly alter the editorial line of this previously Lebanese-Saudi sensitivities station, given the deaf rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the animosity between the leaders of the two petromonarchies, Saudi Mohamad Ben Salman, and Abu Dhabi, Mohamad Ben Zayed, Israel’s privileged ally in the area and the European radical right, because of its fierce hostility to the Islamists.

To go further on this theme, see these links:

On the links between Abu Dhabi and the extreme European right, see this link

And the article of Mediapart dated 19 January 2026, the secret plan of the United Arab Emirates to influence the internal public debate in France.

The media empire of the Hariri clan

An institution of legend consubstantial to the history of Lebanon, Rafic Hariri, who will lead the Lebanese government for ten years (1992-1998/2000-2003), began by trying to tame the Lebanese press by unlocking from his personal cassette the sum of $250,000 as a contribution to the construction of the new building of the press union. In the autumn of 1991, less than a year before his accession to power, he attracted the good graces of the president of the journalists’ union, Mr. Melhem Karam, a man sheltered from need, the owner of a large press group including a French-language publication known as « La Revue du Liban » and, moreover, the union’s unremovable boss for forty years.

In a public relations operation aimed directly at Lebanese journalists, he will not hesitate either to charter a special aircraft for the coverage of the Lebanese President’s first post-war visit to France, Mr. Elias Hraoui, in the autumn of 1991, at his expense, for sixty correspondents accomodating for the occasion in Paris. A man of power and above all full powers, Hariri did not suffer any contestation. Discordance was extremely unwelcome, as was dubious or more simply questioning.

By will or by force, by seduction or coercion, money or violence, Hariri has thus constituted in 15 years a real media empire assisted by a re-opage of laudative scribes for his greatest glory and that of his projects. Many journalists have succumbed to material seductions because of the need for survival in an exsangue country, or more simply for the satisfaction of a vain thirst for social recognition that the fascists of power generate.

Going on a daily pilgrimage to the City Café in Beirut at the foot of the Prime Minister’s residence and showing with the spokesman and distributor of the Haririan manna, Nihad Machnouk, was then a ritual of the best chic, the ultimate of professional consecration and social consideration during the passage of Mr. Hariri to power.

At the time of his death, Rafic Hariri was thus, after twenty-five years of political life, at the head of a multimedia device comprising six vectors, including a television channel and radio and connections in six major Lebanese publications. A sign of ecumenism or opportunism, the recruitment of a cohort of about a hundred heteroclite journalists covers the range of Lebanese and Arab political sensitivities, ranging from former communist militants to militiamen of Lebanese forces.

Beyond Radio-Orient, which he will seize on the eve of his coming to power in 1992, Hariri founded an Al-Mostaqbal television channel, which means « The Future », an announcement of his futuristic political project. He bought the magazine of the same name « Al-Mostaqbal », long published in Paris by Arab nationalists fighting colonialism, before founding a political party of the same name, whose leadership he entrusted to a former communist leader Mohamad Kichleh.

Radio Orient, a flag of convenience in an area of no law

The first Arab-speaking community radio station in continental Europe and the first Arab-speaking radio station in Europe, Radio-Orient, broadcasting from Paris, an off-shore medium par excellence, for a long time constituted a pavilion of convenience in a non-right zone, a condensed history of communication and triangular ancillary relations between Paris, the petromonarchies of the Gulf and the Lebanese-Saudi billionaire.

Radio Orient thus ensured the broadcast of Friday’s prayer live from Mecca, including the sermon of the Rigorist wahahabi Islam preacher, to his Muslim audience in France; an exorbitant privilege, incompatible with the principle of secularism that governs the public life of the only country in the world claiming this principle.

Without embarrassing moral considerations, the Western countries had since pretty lurette yielded to the discreet charms of petrodollars and for a handful of dollars had sold their souls.

On this point see this link:https://www.madaniya.info/2018/02/02/europe-islam-jihad-for-a-petrodollars-l-europe-a-sold-son-ame-1-2

However, the battle in symbolic order will not stop there. Rafic Hariri will bulge the main headlines of Lebanese newspapers that have lured generations of nationalist activists from the last quarter of the 20th century: « Saout Al-Uurouba », the voice of Arabism, an organ of the Najjadé party of Adnane Hakim, a mythical newspaper of the Muslim youth of Beirut whose slogan « Arab oil must return to the Arabs » sounded like a disavowal of the energy policy of Mr Hariri’s friends, the oil monarchs of the pro-American Gulf. The Lebanese-Saudi billionaire will also seize the newspaper « Al-Hoda » and a French-speaking daily « Le Matin ».

These three titles do not appear but constitute a sort of strategic reserve. Their entry into circulation must be decided on the basis of the imperatives of its policy, in the event, in particular, that the necessity of increasing its firepower in the face of its detractors is imposed or that it is necessary to gratify with a sinecure a zealous servant notified by the envied title of newspaper director. Beyond the satisfaction of a good customerelism, however, the holding of a licence from a French-speaking newspaper met an eminently political objective: to place the risk of competition on the Orient-Le Jour in a small market and lead it to composition.

This newspaper, with a modest circulation unrelated to its reputation, is seen as the great French-speaking daily in Lebanon and throughout the Arab East. As such, it has long benefited from a disguised subsidy from France in the form of a free supply of newsprint, in support of La Francophonie. « Le Matin », a secret boot of Rafic Hariri, as well as the appeasement of a Hariri supporter of the presidential candidacy of the editor of the newspaper, Michel Eddé, eternal postulant to the supreme judiciary, will in fact be his main argument to compel the bourgeoisie of French-speaking and Francophile Christian affairs to seal a political and electoral partnership with the Lebanese-Saudi billionaire and to enthrone in the political seral.

Still in the symbol and probably by inclination for his youthful love, the movement of Arab nationalists of Georges Habbache, of which he was a sympathizer in Saida (South Lebanon), he will contribute to the acquisition by one of his relatives, Abdel Karim Khalil, of the magazine « Al-Hadaf », spokesman for the marxizing organization of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FPLP), long led by one of the most mediated Palestinian leaders, the poet Ghassane Kanafani. Even the prestigious newspaper « Al-Nahar », long spokeswoman of the liberal Arab intelligentsia, will not resist the attraction of Mr. Hariri.

Artisan of the editorial revolution that gave rise to modern Arab journalism in the 1960s, the owner of the Nahar, Ghassane Tuéni, former diplomatic adviser to President Amine Gemayel, will partner with Mr Hariri, and his brother-in-law, Marwane Hamadé, one of the most active members of the Hariri governments.

In 2002, however, Mr. Hariri transferred his shares in « Al-Nahar » to the Lebanese-Saudi prince Walid Ben Talal, who challenged him with Sunni leadership in Beirut because of his affiliation with the former Prime Minister and father of Lebanese independence Riad el-Solh.

Other glorious titles of the Lebanese press, which were in their time spokespersons of the Palestinian-Progressive coalition during the Lebanon war, later appeared receptive to its seduction enterprises and to more or less direct subsidies, including « Al-Sharq » and « Al-Liwa ».

Undoubtedly wanting to defuse the opposition, the former Prime Minister has rallied wide as evidenced by the organization chart of his media empire.

The names of the large Muslim families were associated with former members of the Lebanese forces (Christian militias) such as Rima Torbey, or former Marxist militants such as Nassir al-Assaad and Tony Francis. At the top of the pyramid, however, representatives of the great Muslim bourgeoisie included Assaad Mokaddem, a former diplomat in the Arab League, and Mohamad Al-Samak, an old pro-Saudi journalist, former political adviser to former Prime Minister Saëb Salam and member of the Islamic-Christian dialogue, as well as Nihad Al-Machnouk, nephew of a former nationalist leader in Beirut and Nadim Al-Mounla, P.D.G. of « Future T.V. ».

This channel serves as a point of fall for former militants reconverted to political realism, such as Paul Chaoul, and for former trade unionists, such as Issam Jurdi, not to mention the position of Spokesman of SOLIDERE, who wanted to be the window of Mr Hariri’s real estate empire, whom he paradoxically confided to a reporter on the bumpy route, Rached Fayed, whom he nevertheless evicted while the newspaper « Le Monde » pointed a finger, in an invigorating article published in July 1998, « the forced moronisms of visitors of all edges » recorded in the quarterly bulletin of the Solidere group while Lebanon was facing « a heritage catastrophe against the background of speculation and money laundering ».

From TV Lebanon to the channel « Al-Mostaqbal » : Rapin as a patronage

In a country affected by 15 years of interfactional war (1975-1990), whose national archives had been looted, whether it was the National Museum, the Library of the Lebanese University or even the archives of the General Security, the documentation centres of the press bodies had become the privileged place for the preservation of memory.

Amputated from its second half by fifteen years of war, the Lebanese lived the war in a kind of partial amnesia, amnesia from the other half of Lebanon, amnesia from the past of Lebanon, amputated from what made its national consciousness.

Promus to the status of Lebanon’s living memory, the newspapers, especially the oldest and best structured, such as « An-Nahar » of the Tuéni family and the group « As-Sayyad » of Saîd Freyha, have published, at the end of the war, luxurious photographic albums, often of quality, with nostalgic tonality, with educational scope, with a mercantile purpose, in an operation that can be summed up in this formula: the memorial lacrimality at the service of the drawer-case of newspapers often on board financial apoplexy.

The documentary stock of Télé-Lebanon, the largest stock of audiovisual archives in one of the oldest media in the Middle East, was a real treasure of war. Hariri will seize this loot, putting his hands on an important documentary heritage (images-sons), historical and emotional of Lebanese nostalgia before war.

The billionaire will acquire 49 percent of the shares of Télé-Lebanon, the Lebanese official television, at a price of five million dollars.

For three years, he will have a doubly official forum as head of government and as a businessman, the main shareholder of public television. But beyond this unfortunate gender confusion in its political and media aspects, the case proved to be a juicy commercial operation. The head of government kept his prey in the time of the duplication of archives, the Lebanese public television before returning it, in generous favour, to the State, saving, under cover of charity, the settlement of substantial copyright.

In the face of parliamentary pressure, Mr Hariri had to hand over to the state his participation at the price of eight million dollars, taking in the passage a surplus of three million dollars, with as a bonus the entire stock of documentary of this chain which his collaborators duplicated during the three years when their boss owned it.

Great art in concealment, rapin in the form of patronage: Before his appropriation by Mr Hariri, Télé Liban had the exclusive monopoly of broadcasting until the year 2.012. After the resale of its shares, public television had lost on the two assets of its strength, the broadcasting monopoly and the documentary monopoly, of which it is now deprived.

The gratuitous duplication on behalf of its new private TV channel Future TV of the precious stock of archives in the Middle East, constituted by thirty years of television activities, has also deprived Tele-Lebanon of substantial revenues from rebroadcast rights.

In any event, the financial and media protuberance of the Lebanese-Saudi billionaire, as well as the fugitive behaviour of his successor, his younger son Saad, during the Israeli destructive war against Lebanon in 2006, which earned him the sobriquet of Beirut’s plank, will, however, be of little weight in the face of the opposition of his opponents, the media gravitating in the Hezbollah orbit, whose credibility draws its strength from the reliability of his leader, Hassan Nasrallah, a craftsman of two glorious acts of arms against Israel, the Israeli military disengagement from southern Lebanon in 2000, and his victorious ballistic response in the Israeli strategic hinterland during the war of 2006, as well as « Al Mayadeen », the channel founded by Ghassan Ben Jedo, a Lebanese-Tunisian journalist, consisting of dissidents of the Qatar chain « Al Jazeera ».