On Thursday, an armed depositor detained bank employees in Beirut’s crowded Hamra neighborhood demanding a deposit worth more than $200,000, two security sources told AFP, in a new episode of trouble. in financial institutions since the beginning of the economic collapse.
The security forces put up a tight cordon at the Federal Bank and are trying to negotiate with an angry depositor so that he opens the bank door and releases employees. A security source said: “The depositor managed to break into the bank with a hunting rifle and combustible materials, threatening employees if he did not receive his money.” According to a security source, “a man in his 40s doused the bank with gasoline and closed the entrance, keeping employees inside.” According to the source, the depositor is required to receive his contribution, the value of which exceeds $200,000.
The National News Agency, the official representative in Lebanon, stated that the contributor “threatened to set himself on fire and kill those in the branch, and also pointed his weapon at the branch manager’s face.” A video circulating on social media shows two people negotiating behind a bank’s iron door with a depositor named Bassam. You can see how he is talking nervously, holding a weapon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, refusing to let any of the employees go. One of the negotiators asks him to allow the exit of two depositors who are inside the bank.
Lebanon, mired in a suffocating economic crisis since the fall of 2019 that the World Bank rates as one of the worst in the world since 1850, has seen similar incidents with banks imposing strict limits on withdrawals of deposits, especially in dollars. In light of the political divide preventing meaningful action to be taken to end a crash that did not involve any sector or social segment, the Bank of Lebanon issues circulars from time to time to quell depositors’ dissatisfaction by allowing them to withdraw part of their dollar deposits up to a certain ceiling.
