President of the Beirut Bar Association Nader Gaspard. (Credit: Claude Assaf/L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — President of the Beirut Bar Association Nader Gaspard announced on Saturday that representatives of the liberal professions had suspended discussions with the Association of Banks in Lebanon, which had been launched in an attempt to reach an agreement on the return of deposits, including those of professional organizations, trapped in commercial banks by ad hoc restrictions imposed since the onset of the country’s financial crisis in 2019.
In March, representatives of these independent and freelance professions had called on the government to “hold the governor of the Banque du Liban accountable” and invited the CEOs of banking institutions to a final meeting, before legal action is taken against them.
The announcement of the suspension of these discussions was made in a statement issued Saturday on the sidelines of a meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati at his residence in downtown Beirut. The meeting included members of the Commission for the Protection of Depositors' Rights, formed last December under the auspices of the Bar Association with the mission to strengthen the legal means to enforce these rights. Mikati expressed his support for the position of the liberal professions and the need to share the losses by prioritizing responsibilities.
Lebanon must subscribe to a series of concrete reform obligations in order to hope to obtain financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund. A preliminary agreement with the fund was announced on April 7, but it will only be converted into a final agreement if the authorities first meet prerequisites, including bank restructuring, via the adoption of a bank resolution law. The head of government has pledged to take into account the position of the liberal professions in the process of determining the measures that will be adopted and applied.
The accumulated losses of the country are estimated at more than $72 billion by the authorities and the IMF, a slate that must be distributed between the state, BDL, banks and depositors.
This article was originally published in French in L’Orient-Le Jour.
