CNN
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A former Lebanese ambassador staged a sit-in in his bank outside the capital Beirut Tuesday, refusing to leave until he receives his money, his wife told CNN.
Georges Siam’s bank is one of four branches across Lebanon that were blocked by depositors claiming their savings on Tuesday.
According to his wife, Siam – who was Lebanon’s former ambassador to Qatar, Turkey, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates and is currently Ireland’s honorary consul in Lebanon – refuses to leave the bank in Hamzieh after the branch refused to give the diplomat the usual amount he withdraws each month.
“It’s our money and we don’t need to beg for it,” Golda Siam said, adding that her husband was unarmed and peaceful.
Last month, Siam declared its support for its compatriot Sali Hafizwho robbed a bank with a toy gun.
“We need more of that. The lady is a hero,” he said. tweeted at the time.
On Tuesday, two other men robbed banks in the Beqaa Valley and Tire in Lebanon, demanding that their own savings be returned to them, in what has become a symbol of the dire living conditions taking hold amid the crisis. financial collapse of Lebanon. Two of the men used firearms and took hostages.
A fourth bank was also stormed in Tripoli on Tuesday by a group of disgruntled power company employees protesting over late payments and pay cuts, according to depositors advocacy group Outcry Association.
Across Lebanon, bank accounts have been frozen for more than two years as banks imposed capital controls amid the country’s growing economic difficulties.
The country’s increasingly desperate depositors reacted by bank branch robbery in a series of attempts to extract their funds. After a wave of burglaries last month, Lebanon’s interior minister accused certain groups of organizing illegal actions and destabilizing national security.
The Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) closed all institutions for a week after the September 16 incidents, reopening branches only for commercial transactions 10 days later.
Banks bear the “burden” of a systemic crisis created by the Lebanese government and its Central Bank, ABL said in a statement on Tuesday.
The ABL also accused the Lebanese government of turning people against the banks and warned that the country’s currency could one day collapse to the point that money will be weighed instead of counted, adding that at this At that point, “the hope of recovering the deposits will fade”.
Lebanon’s parliament has been working on a formal capital control law to stabilize the country’s finances, but passage of the bill has stalled.
Among the reforms being considered, the government also announced that it would start adjusting its official exchange rate in early November, in the hope of increasing foreign exchange reserves. The change is part of a set of conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a loan to help the country’s economies.
Demanding more security for bank workers, the Lebanese Bank Employees Union called for a sit-in protest on October 12.