Depositors storm 5 banks as Lebanon’s cash crisis worsens
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese depositors, including one armed with a hunting rifle, broke into at least five banks on Friday to demand their trapped savings, a sign of growing chaos in the small Mediterranean nation amid a historic economic meltdown.
Friday’s raids were the most in a single day, and raised the possibility that more desperate depositors would try to extract their money by force. The break-ins reflect public anger at the banks’ strict informal controls on cash withdrawals, a byproduct of the financial crisis.
In an apparent attempt to regroup and buy time, the Association of Banks in Lebanon said all branches would be closed for three days, starting Monday.
However, it was not immediately clear how banks or the authorities will be able to halt a possible wave of such break-ins. The depositors who have taken matters into their own hands have enjoyed widespread public sympathy, and have been treated with relative leniency by law enforcement.
On the other hand, a groundswell of bank break-ins could further destabilise Lebanon and its crumbling institutions, as the economic crisis drags on, with no end in sight.
Since the meltdown began three years ago, depositors with US dollars have mostly been able to withdraw money in Lebanese pounds at a much lower rate than the real value. The losses are one of the factors that have pushed nearly three quarters of Lebanese into poverty and driven up crime.
Some desperate depositors have resorted to force.
The attacks on three bank branches in Beirut and one in a southern coastal town came two days after a woman accompanied by activists and brandishing what she said was a toy pistol broke into a bank branch to take $13,000 from her trapped savings.
She said the money would be used for her sister’s cancer treatment.
The crisis has become worse in the past months. The political class that has ruled the country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war has done almost nothing to get Lebanon out of what the World Bank described as one of the world’s worst economic crises.
