Abed Soubra inside the Blom bank in the Tariq el-Jdideh neighbourhood which he entered holding a gun and demanded his $300,000 in savings. Photo / AP
Abed Soubra inside the Blom bank in the Tariq el-Jdideh neighbourhood which he entered holding a gun and demanded his $300,000 in savings. Photo / AP
A Lebanese activist group has vowed to help cash-strapped citizens carry out bank heists to access their own savings as people take increasingly desperate measures to get around the crisis-hit country's frozen banking system.
Lebanon's banks said they would be closed for three days after at least five armed robberies were carried out in one day.
No one appears to have been hurt so far, although there were reports of gunshots fired during one incident.
Most heists are being spurred on by crowds gathered at the banks who are lauding these citizens-turned-robbers as heroes.
Among them is Abed Soubra, who entered a branch of Blom bank in Beirut's Tariq el-Jdideh neighbourhood on Friday morning holding a gun and demanding his US$300,000 ($500,000) in savings.
He was still locked in the branch hours later, telling Reuters by phone that he had handed over his gun to security forces and just wanted his money.
Suheila Kusheir, centre, who entered with Abed Soubra, who allegedly held hostages in a bank, leaves a Blom Bank branch after she received US$1,000. Photo / AP
"I'll stay here three, four, five days - I won't move until I get my deposit," he said.
Soubra said he refused an offer by the bank to get part of his savings in the local Lebanese currency, which has become close to worthless due to rampant inflation.
He was cheered on by a large crowd of people gathered outside, including Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, who carried out the very first hold-up in August to get his savings from his bank.
"We're going to keep seeing this happen as long as people have money inside. What do you want them to do? They don't have another solution," said Hussein. He got around US$30,000 ($50,000) from his savings of US$200,000 ($334,000).
Advocacy group Depositors' Outcry said people were at breaking point amid an economic crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands pushed into poverty and struggling to pay their bills.
"And we're organising more than this, and you have no choice. People's rights are sacred," said Alla Khorchid, the head of the group.
Other incidents included a man in his 50s accompanied by his son holding up a Byblos Bank in the southern city of Ghazieh and a man armed with a pellet gun storming a branch of LGB Bank in Beirut's Ramlet al-Bayda.
So far "robbers" have been arrested and released without charge.
Media and security gather outside BLOM bank branch in Beirut. Photo / AP
The interior minister called for an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon.
Lebanon has been hit by one of the world's worst-ever economic crises since a financial crash in 2019. Its currency has lost more than 90 per cent of its value on the black market, while poverty and unemployment have soared.
Banks have been widely accused of operating like a cartel and spiriting large amounts out of the country for senior Lebanese officials at a time when foreign transfers are already blocked for ordinary citizens.
The wave of heists has increased since Depositor's Outcry accompanied Sali Hafez in a Beirut branch on Wednesday, where they staged a hold-up with her nephew's plastic gun to access savings to pay for her sister's cancer treatment.
Abed Soubra, who allegedly held hostages in a bank in an effort to get to funds in his account, speaks to journalists inside a Blom Bank branch in Beirut. Photo / AP
They doused Blom bank Beirut branch in gasoline and threatened to set it alight as they demanded US$12,000 ($20,000) plus the equivalent of about US$1,000 in Lebanese pounds. Hafez said she had a total of US$20,000 ($33,000) in savings trapped in the bank and had considered selling her kidney.
Activists claim this is the beginning of an uprising against a system widely seen as corrupt.
"The real beginning of the revolution started yesterday, when Sali Hafez entered the bank, and there is no turning back," Ibrahim Abdullah, a member of the Depositors' Outcry group said on Thursday. "This revolution is against all the banks."
