Lawyer and activist Rami Olleik, founder of Mouttahidoun, speaks during a demonstration in front of the Justice Palace in Beirut. (Credit: Marie-Jo Sader/L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — Depositors are threatening to set bank owners' houses on fire, blaming the Lebanese judiciary for barring access to their frozen bank deposits, Rami Ollaik, lawyer and founder of advocacy group Mouttahidoun told L'Orient Today on Wednesday.
The threat came "in view of all the infringements on [depositors'] rights and the dubious insistence of the Lebanese judiciary to neglect its role in achieving justice, which confirms its complicity with bank owners," Ollaik said.
In the statement released on Wednesday by Mouttahidoun (Arabic for "United") — which supports depositors who forcibly withdraw their own money from banks — the depositors said that they "would hold the judiciary fully responsible for everything that may result" from burning down the bank owners' houses.
According to the statement, depositors are "currently getting ready" to burn houses, though did not specify when they would allegedly do so.
Earlier Wednesday, the Cry of the Depositors, another advocacy group, organized a sit-in in front of Banque du Liban in Beirut, protesting the bank's actions to slash depositors' money, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Recent BDL circulars have indirectly validated otherwise illegal banking restrictions imposed these past three years, while authorities have allowed de facto capital controls to be imposed in the absence of any law regulating these measures.