A branch of Creditbank in Saida, South Lebanon, on March 1, 2023. (Courtesy of: Mountasser Abdallah)
A customer armed with a gas canister, with which he threatened to start a fire, managed to withdraw funds from his savings account after holding a brief sit-in Wednesday morning at a Creditbank branch in Saida, South Lebanon.
Since the onset of the financial crisis in Lebanon in 2019, bank deposits have been subject to severe restrictions under informal policies imposed by commercial banks in the absence of a capital control law.
According to L'Orient Today's correspondent in the South, the depositor finally managed to withdraw the requested sum of money from his account and left the premises without perpetrating any violence. The bank manager told L'Orient Today that "the case has been solved," without giving further details.
Security forces were deployed at the scene during the incident.
With banking restrictions in place, bank holdups and sit-ins by customers wanting to withdraw their own funds have increased in recent months in Lebanon.
These actions come as the lira continues to lose value against the US dollar on the parallel market and with more than three quarters of Lebanese living below the poverty line. Despite a devaluation of the national currency by the authorities at the beginning of 2023, its steep depreciation on the parallel market has continued, with the lira trading at more than LL89,000 to the greenback on the parallel market on Wednesday morning.
Reporting contributed by Mountasser Abdallah.