Five Lebanese banks were raided on Friday as they tried to unfreeze frozen savings, the latest in a series of such “robberies” that have garnered widespread public support in the crisis-hit country.
Lebanon has been mired in an economic crisis for more than two years, since its currency began to depreciate and banks began imposing strict restrictions on withdrawals.
In the past week, seven bank branches were hit by “depositor robbery,” prompting lenders to announce a three-day shutdown starting Monday, according to the Association of Banks in Lebanon.
As events snowballed on Friday, Interior Minister Bassam Maulvi called an emergency meeting in the afternoon.
“Reclaiming rights in this way… could break the system and disenfranchise the rest of the depositors,” he told reporters after the meeting.
Public prosecutor Ghassan Ouidat urged police to arrest all those involved in the robberies, calling them “armed robberies on banks aimed at preventing the banking sector from functioning in Lebanon, and provoking further financial and economic crises”. What is stated?
Ouedat also asked police to investigate whether any of them were connected, a judicial source told AFP.
A series of copycat raids by disgruntled depositors appears to have begun after an employee filmed himself using a toy gun at a Beirut bank on Wednesday.
AFP correspondents and a security source said there were three more such incidents in Beirut and two in southern Lebanon on Friday.
- ’empty jerrycan’ –
In one case, a man carrying a gun and a jerry can of fuel demanded money from staff at a Byblos Bank branch in the southern town of Ghazia.
Accompanied by his son, he threatened bank staff with a gun, which a Lebanese television channel said might be a toy, before demanding his own.
“He emptied a jerry can of fuel onto the floor,” a bank security guard told an AFP correspondent.
The man walked away with about $19,000 in cash but turned himself in to police shortly after as a crowd gathered outside the bank to support him.
A few hours later, in the Beirut neighborhood of Tariq al-Jadeda, depositor Abid Sobra took over a Bloom Bank branch, demanding access to his frozen savings.
An AFP correspondent inside the branch said he eventually handed over his weapon to police in the evening but insisted he intended to stay in the bank until he got the money.
Witnesses told an AFP photographer at the scene that another man armed with a hunting rifle took over a bank in Beirut’s Ramlet al-Baida neighborhood.
The depositors’ union said the man was eventually escorted out of the branch by security forces but his siblings were given $15,000 of his savings.
A man who held a bank in Cheheim in the south was also chased away by security forces after pocketing $25,000 of his savings, the group said.
Delay in new budget
The heist comes two days after a young worker stormed a central Beirut bank armed with fuel and a plastic gun to demand the deposit of his sister, who needed to pay for cancer treatment.
The woman, identified as Sally Hafiz, earned nearly $13,000 and became an instant hero on social media.
“He had every right to do that,” said Carla Chehab, a 28-year-old resident of Beirut.
He added that the thieves are the banks, the government and all the rich people who protect them.
The severity of Lebanon’s crisis is blamed on selfish political elites and decades of corruption.
The currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value on the black market in recent years, while poverty and unemployment have soared.
Banks have been widely accused of acting like a cartel and funneling large sums of money out of the country for Lebanese officials while foreign transfers were already blocked for ordinary citizens.
A parliament session to approve the 2022 budget, a key reform needed for Lebanon to secure billions of dollars from international lenders, was adjourned on Friday until September 26 after a quorum was lost when some lawmakers Walked out.
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