The Crime of Fraud by Misusing the Right of Disposition of Real Estate Property

The Lebanese Penal Code stipulates the crime of fraud within Chapter Eleven of Book Two, which includes monetary crimes; However, even though the legislator has defined the crime of fraud and defined its elements, his definition of fraudulent maneuvers in the second paragraph of Article 655 of the Penal Code and the addition of the case of disposing movable or immovable property by someone who has no right or capacity to do so or by someone who has the right or capacity to dispose of it and misusing his right in the aim of extorting money, has raised a legal issue and a difference of opinions about whether the abuse of the right to act in this case constitutes an element of the crime of fraud or an independent crime with its own elements. Therefore, when the transfer of ownership of a certain property from one person to another is subject to special conditions such as the necessity of registering real estate sales in the real estate registry in order for the sale to take its effects even between the contracting parties, the owner (seller) still has the right to dispose of the property sold from him as long as the transfer of ownership is not registered in the name of the buyer, which raises the question as to whether the owner's abuse in using his right by selling the property for a second time from another person constitutes the crime of fraud or not.