Current:Home > reviewsPeople in Lebanon are robbing banks and staging sit-ins to access their own savings -SummitInvest
People in Lebanon are robbing banks and staging sit-ins to access their own savings
View
Date:2025-04-12 07:57:26
TRIPOLI, Lebanon — On a recent weekday in Lebanon's second-largest city, the atmosphere at a branch of the IBL Bank is tense. Security and police are gathered outside. Soldiers are clutching M16 rifles. People are crowding the entrance.
Inside, Zahra Khaled, a 53-year-old in a wheelchair who's in urgent need of medical care, is refusing to leave until she is given her savings. The bank has frozen all of it — tens of thousands of dollars. After selling personal possessions and exhausting all other options, she and her adult daughter have now entered the bank and will not budge.
Lebanon's banks froze most accounts three years ago amid an economic collapse. This year, faced with increasingly desperate circumstances, more people are resorting to extreme measures to access their savings. Khaled's protest is one of the milder tactics. Other Lebanese have taken to robbing banks for their own funds, brandishing real or toy guns. Most take only what they are owed, and so far no one has been reported killed in a robbery.
At the IBL Bank, Khaled has the backing of her own relatives and other depositors. "I'm here to support her to get her savings," says Mahmoud al Khattib, a retired soldier whose bank account is also frozen. "The stink of this corrupt system has affected us all."
The World Bank says Lebanon's leaders spent decades running the country's economy like a Ponzi scheme. According to its investigation, politicians and their financiers hollowed out public services to enrich themselves and those around them. When the economy collapsed in 2019, the report says, Lebanon's bank owners should have assumed the losses. Instead they froze depositors' accounts.
Since then, the country's politicians and heads of financial institutions have resisted implementing economic reforms — such as laws on money laundering — that would unlock funding from the International Monetary Fund. Critics say one of the reasons for this is because leaving the laws vague has allowed politically well-connected Lebanese to get their money out of the country.
Meanwhile, more than 80% of the population lives in poverty, including Khaled's family.
Khaled negotiates with the staff at her bank branch for hours. But eventually the cashiers and managers leave, and police escort her and her family out, empty-handed.
"The bank brought the cops on us. We're only asking for our rights," her son Ismail Mohammed, 32, shouts, gripping the handles of his mother's wheelchair. "You've left us to starve."
"May God smite our leaders," his mother cries.
Khaled lives with her sister in a large apartment with high ceilings and brightly colored traditional Lebanese floor tiles. But it's so empty now that their voices echo in the rooms. Khaled has sold her furniture, piece by piece, just to get by. A small coffee table in the living room is piled with cans and vegetables they'd emptied from the kitchen fridge before selling it too.
Ismail Mohammed shows NPR bank statements indicating the family has close to $90,000 in their account. Part of this is money is from a house he and his mother sold just before the banks froze depositors' accounts.
In the economic collapse, Mohammed lost his job. The Lebanese lira has lost almost 90% of its value since October 2019, and inflation has soared. Now, the family's debts are piling up.
"It's humiliating," Mohammed says. "We're even forced now to take produce from the grocer's on credit. I can't bring myself to look the greengrocer in the eye."
Khaled's daughter Amina Mohammed, 35, says she and her husband and their three children will be evicted by the end of December if they cannot pay their rent. She's also worried for her mother's health. Khaled has already lost her right leg to diabetes. Now she has pains in her left leg and doctors have told her she needs an MRI scan and possibly surgery — all things she cannot pay for.
"When your mother needs medicine and you have money you can't access — what do you do?" says Amina, shaking with rage. "What choice do you have?"
Several days after their visit to the bank, Zahra Khaled's family tells NPR that the bank has agreed to give them some of their savings so she can pay for medical care. Some banks do sometimes release funds for individual depositors on compassionate grounds. But overall, for now, there's no solution and most depositors question if they will ever see their money again.
Kamel Wazni of the Lebanese Control Commission, which supervises the country's banking sector, can't rule out that some of the depositors' money might be gone for good. Billions of Lebanon's dollar reserves have been taken out of the country, and billions more have been spent on subsidies and seeking to respond to the economic collapse.
Banks do allow withdrawals of $400 per account per month, plus some Lebanese currency, in a strategy that he says will repay as many as 70% of depositors.
But this does little to help those who need larger and more immediate sums. So depositors have started coordinating their actions, even forming a movement.
"A depositor gets into the bank; we are outside," says Ibrahim Abdallah, a spokesperson for a group called Cry of the Depositors, recalling a bank heist.
He says the crowd cheers the robber on: "We're like: 'Yeah! Do it. Come on!' We're giving them some motivation."
The group has lawyers — they too include depositors locked out of their savings — who sometimes offer legal advice to those staging heists on how to protect themselves from prosecution.
Abdallah says he knows these robberies to "liberate" deposits are not right.
"The normal process [if you've been wronged] is to go through the legal route." But in Lebanon, he says, the legal route is blocked by corrupt judges.
The country's leaders, he says, "are forcing the depositors to become criminals."
At a protest by Cry of the Depositors outside a hotel in downtown Beirut where bankers gathered for a conference, Abdallah points to a nearby glass-paneled skyscraper whose many apartments he helped sell through his work in real estate.
"I have millions in the bank. Millions," he says. "My son sometimes says, 'Let's go have dinner.' I can't afford to have a dinner."
veryGood! (716)
Related
- Trump issues order to ban transgender troops from serving openly in the military
- The Best Early Prime Day Fashion Deals Right Now: $7.99 Tops, $11 Sweaters, $9 Rompers & More
- King Charles III mourns Maggie Smith after legendary British actress dies at 89
- Opinion: Antonio Pierce's cold 'business' approach reflects reality of Raiders' challenges
- Israel lets Palestinians go back to northern Gaza for first time in over a year as cease
- Daniel Radcliffe Details Meeting Harry Potter Costar Maggie Smith in Moving Tribute
- In 'Defectors,' journalist Paola Ramos explores the effects of Trumpism on the Latino vote
- Florida financial adviser indicted in alleged illegal tax shelter scheme
- The Daily Money: Spending more on holiday travel?
- Kylie Jenner's Pal Yris Palmer Shares What It’s Really Like Having a Playdate With Her Kids
Ranking
- Sarah J. Maas books explained: How to read 'ACOTAR,' 'Throne of Glass' in order.
- Joe Wolf, who played for North Carolina and 7 NBA teams, dies at 59
- Kentucky Gov. Beshear seeks resignation of sheriff charged with killing judge
- Shawn Johnson Reveals the Milestone 9-Month-Old Son Bear Hit That Nearly Gave Her a Heart Attack
- Newly elected West Virginia lawmaker arrested and accused of making terroristic threats
- Shawn Johnson Reveals the Milestone 9-Month-Old Son Bear Hit That Nearly Gave Her a Heart Attack
- Kentucky sign language interpreter honored in program to give special weather radios to the deaf
- Kentucky sues Express Scripts, alleging it had a role in the deadly opioid addiction crisis
Recommendation
DoorDash steps up driver ID checks after traffic safety complaints
Small plane crashes into Utah Lake Friday, officials working to recover bodies
Dakota Johnson's Underwear Story Involving Barack Obama Will Turn You Fifty Shades of Red
Helene leaves behind 'overwhelming' destruction in one small Florida town
Toyota to invest $922 million to build a new paint facility at its Kentucky complex
North Carolina appeals court blocks use of university’s digital ID for voting
Wisconsin city’s mailing of duplicate absentee ballots raises confusion, questions over elections
Opinion: Antonio Pierce's cold 'business' approach reflects reality of Raiders' challenges