Video posted by The Depositor's Cry posted on X (formerly Twitter) appears to show a depositor storming into an Arab Finance House branch in Beirut's Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood, Sept. 19, 2023. (Credit : X/@sarkhitmoudiin)
BEIRUT — Internal Security Forces on Tuesday prevented a husband-and-wife holdup operation at an Arab Finance House branch in Beirut's Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood, a spokesperson for The Depositor's Cry group told L'Orient Today.
The incident is the latest in a string of successful and attempted holdups by Lebanese depositors to seize their own bank savings, which have been blocked in the banks by a series of illegal measures since October 2019.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Depositor's Cry, a group that rallies Lebanese citizens angry about their blocked bank funds, posted on the X platform that Hussein Hassan Saado broke in with his wife to the bank. It did not name the wife.
The unarmed depositors were unable to secure their $40,000 after the ISF "aggressively" forced them out of the bank, the Depositor's Cry spokesperson said.
An ISF spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Saado was reportedly arrested, but it remained unclear whether he had been released.
Arab Finance House is a small Islamic bank that has operated in Lebanon since 2003 and has been a member of the Association of Banks in Lebanon since 2004. It owns and operates four branches in the country, but two of them have been temporarily closed since the start of the country's economic crisis in 2019.