Lebanon banks closes its doors after repeated storming incidents, officials appeals to depositors to avoid violence

CAIRO – 16 September 2022: Lebanese Minister of Interior, Bassam Mawlawi, appealed to depositors of Lebanese banks not to use violence to restore their money.

He addressed Lebanese people saying: “your rights cannot be restored this way, because it invades the banking system and security”

During a Friday urgent meeting with the Central Security Council, Mawlawi was disturbed by the increase in incidents of bank storming by depositors to get their frozen funds due to the economic crisis that Lebanon has been going through for nearly three years.

Several storming incidents have been reported Friday, that reached to nearly eight different incidents all over Lebanon, most of them succussed to recover different amounts of their frozen funds.

Banks however, and due to the repeated incidents decided to close its doors during the coming week for three days as employees started to panic.

Lebanon’s banking association urged authorities on Thursday to hold accountable those engaging in “verbal and physical attacks” on banks and said lenders themselves would not be lenient.

On September 14, A Lebanese citizen, Sali Hafez, broke into BLOM Bank and took hostages in order to withdraw her frozen deposit.

Hafez attributed her action to the inability to pay the cost of the treatment of her ill sister, which pushed her to withdraw her frozen deposit.

She stated that she withdrew the deposit by force, fled from the Lebanese security and went with her sister to Istanbul to complete the latter treatment.

However, Hafez used a fake gun to break into the bank.

Lebanon is suffering from a severe economic crisis that began in 2019 and intensified this year, causing the collapse of most basic public services in the country, while poor groups bear the brunt of the economic crisis in a country where the cost of everything is rising on a daily basis.

The economic crisis, which is the largest in decades, escalated due to the increase in energy prices. Thus, the state announced the unavailability of dollars, and prevented any bank withdrawals.