Late last month, Sali Hafez walked into a Beirut bank with a fake pistol and demanded a teller hand over $12,000. On Thursday, the novice bank robber walked from a court to the acclaim of supporters and even to smiles of apparent admiration from court officials and police.
After a fortnight on the run, Hafez had handed herself in a day earlier, in effect throwing herself on the mercy of a court system that was trying to navigate its way through an economic collapse like no other and the disintegration of Lebanese citizens’ pacts with their already fragile state.
Her gamble paid off, with a judge handing down a small fine and a six-month travel ban – a veritable slap on the wrist for anyone convicted of a bank heist. But little is normal in Lebanon any more, where robberies of banks by depositors seeking access to their own money are increasingly commonplace, where banks themselves are encased in iron and surrounded by jittery guards, and where an indifferent government has kept savings off limits to nearly all depositors for more than two years.
In the past two months alone, more than a dozen bank “robberies” have taken place across the country. Some have involved real guns and bad tempers. Others, like Hafez’s, were bluffs that won the day, and yet more were carried out by desperate depositors refusing to leave unless money – their own savings – was handed over, often for life-saving medical treatment.
On Wednesday, a Lebanese MP, Cynthia Zarazir, staged a sit-in with her lawyer at her own branch until officials agreed to hand over $8,500 (£7,600) from her account, which she wants to use for her sister’s cancer treatment. Two more branches faced similar standoffs.
Frustrated customers at a Blom bank in Beirut’s Hamra district all said they could not understand how depositors were not even angrier. “Look at this mess,” said one man, Rashid, 52. “We have to wait here like beggars waiting to get in to even make the case to get out money.”
Around the corner, another man had received global attention in August after holding up his own bank with an assault rifle until he received $20,000 (£18,000) to pay for a family member’s treatment. He too was treated lightly by investigators and court officials, all of whom seem out of ideas about how to deal with a phenomenon that has the broad support of a desperate population.
“At the root of this is the lawlessness of this land,” said Dina Abou Zour, a lawyer and a founder of a group known as the Depositors’ Union, which is campaigning for people’s right to be able to access their savings.
“The government needs to move quickly, but it is not moving at all.”
Lebanese leaders seem to have based their apparent apathy on a belief that a “Hail Mary” rescue package will emerge from the international community, along with revenues from a potential gas field on the southern border with Israel. But neither are imminent, even in the medium term, leaving dwindling central bank reserves unable to support imports or any essential services.
This means that an impoverished country has had to deal with inflation at nearly 200% and the vast majority of all new spending has been served by dollars brought into the country, not by bank reserves. Under current exchange rates the value of the Lebanese pound has fallen from a pegged rate of 1,500 to the dollar to more than 38,000, making large numbers of deposits virtually worthless.
“Many banks are bankrupt,” said Abou Zour. “Things should not be going in this direction. There are no changes in sight. That’s what’s making depositors lose hope. The judges are on strike. Employees are on strike. Courts, institutions are not working.”
The reluctance of officials to make the most basic of reforms is central to the anger of depositors, which see a corrupt ruling class and a kleptocracy of officialdom escaping such severe austerity.
“That’s what makes the Lebanese crisis different,” said Abou Zour. It’s not only a monetary and banking crisis, it’s corruption as well. “It’s very hard to get rid of people and change the system, because there are corrupt people in every position.”
Albert Letayf, a leading investment banker, said every day that reforms are delayed makes it harder for depositors to get their money back. The more you wait, the less you can guarantee, because more and more money will be spent.
“Before the crisis there was $175bn in banks, of which $120bn was in dollars and the rest was in Lebanese pounds. Now there is around $95bn in dollars and $30bn in Lebanese, but that latter number is dubious because of the mass printing of banknotes.
“You have at least $30bn that has been spent by the central bank since the crisis began and that’s without counting the deposits of the banks. They are being burned day by day without an official plan.”
Outside the Hamra bank branch, another customer, Carol Itani, cared nothing for technicalities. “They can argue with numbers all day,” she said. “Let them deal with principles instead. We all need to live. If they don’t let us, many more will bring their guns to the bank.”
