Demonstrators face off with riot police outside Downtown Beirut bank

BEIRUT — More than 100 demonstrators were confronted by riot police as they threw rocks at a Bank of Beirut branch in Downtown Beirut Wednesday, claiming the head of the Association of Lebanese Banks head Salim Sfeir was inside.

Here’s what we know:

    • The protesters arrived in Downtown having gathered earlier in the day in front of Banque du Liban’s headquarters in Hamra to protest their inability to access their deposits due to the continued application of informal capital controls by commercial banks.

    • Protesters outside BDL brandished signs calling for deposits to be returned in the same currency as they were deposited and carried a large banner saying “Pandora exposed you,” referring to the release Sunday of the “Pandora Papers” — some 12 million documents detailing companies' offshore holdings.

    • They also demanded an end to Circular 151 issued in April 2020 and under which US dollar deposits can only be withdrawn in lira at a maximum rate of LL3,900 to the dollar, less than a quarter of the dollar’s value on the parallel market. The circular had been set to expire at the end of September, but authorities last week extended it to Jan. 31, 2022.

    • Sfeir, against whom the protesters' anger was targeted, is also CEO of Bank of Beirut.

    • One protester outside the Bank of Beirut branch told L’Orient Today he threw an egg at a fleeing Sfeir, hitting him. He says he was struck by police in response. Multiple eyewitnesses corroborated his account.

    • Samia Sibaii, a member of the protest group known as Cry of the Depositors, told L’Orient Today that BDL circulars and banks' informal capital controls “disagree with all the rules and all the laws for depositors.”

    • By around 3 p.m., the protesters had dispersed.