FORMER Lebanese prime minister Hassan Diab was accused of fleeing the country today to avoid appearing at a hearing in the Beirut port explosion case.

He had been subpoenaed to attend next weeks hearing by lead investigator Tarek Bitar who aske security forces to ensure he arrived for questioning after failing to appear previously.

Mr Diab denied an accusation that he planned to remain outside Lebanon for about four weeks. His office said he was travelling to the United States and the timing was coincidental.

Nobody has been held to account more than a year after the deadly explosion in which 214 people were killed and thousands injured after thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the port ignited.

Mounting evidence suggests that Mr Diab and other senior government officials were aware of the risks of storing the deadly cargo at the port, but took no action.

A dormant London-registered company called Savaro Ltd had chartered the 2,750-ton shipment in 2013, intending to send it from Georgia to an explosives factory in Mozambique.

It was however detained in Beirut over payment issues. A new report from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named the owner of the company as Ukrainian businessman Volodymyr Verbonol.