He faces six months in prison and a fine, but he has received widespread popular support. For some Lebanese, Abdallah Al-Sai has become a symbol of the drastic restrictions imposed by banks on depositors, against a backdrop of financial collapse. Armed with a weapon and a can of gasoline to ignite, this 30-year-old briefly took bank employees hostage on Tuesday, January 18, in the east of the country, and demanded that his savings be given to him. After winning his case, he surrendered to law enforcement.
The battle is now on for public opinion. A dozen lawyers offered to defend him, seeing in this punching gesture a consequence of the continuous degradation suffered by the Lebanese population. For their part, the banks are offended by the signs of solidarity shown to this man on social networks, and denounce an extortion by means of threats. Procedures are underway to compel Mr. Al-Sai to return the 50,000 dollars (44,000 euros) given to his family.
Since the financial crisis erupted in the fall of 2019, violent actions against banks have remained isolated. But the anger and the feeling of humiliation of the population, brutally transformed into a tool for adjusting the debacle, are immense. “I will be dead before the situation improves. Look at this district, once hyperactive, today at a standstill »observes, discouraged, Hanane, a retiree, in front of a bank in the Hamra district, in Beirut, that workers are bunkering more with metal panels.
Salvage plan scuttled
No official strategy has been put in place to deal with the economic and financial collapse since the torpedoing of the rescue plan prepared by the former government of Hassan Diab in 2020. The roadmap provided for a distribution of the losses, in including large depositors and bank shareholders. The latter, refusing to put their hands in their pockets, had been in the front line to scuttle the initiative.
Since then, the Lebanese have had to deal with the fluctuations of the local currency on the black market, and with a multiplicity of exchange rates (the official one, those for bank withdrawals, that of the Banque du Liban platform (the central bank, BDL) and that of the black market). This situation allows an implicit “haircut” (puncture on deposits), and leaves the strings of the game in the hands of the BDL. The unification of these rates is one of the issues at stake in the discussions which resumed with the International Monetary Fund, Monday January 24, in order to take out a loan. Talks that raise concerns about the future of the accounts of small depositors, on which the “haircut” could intensify.
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