The authorities in Lebanon pledged to prosecute people who storm banks in order to retrieve their financial deposits, while the Association of Depositors considered the frequency of the storming operations to be an “uprising.”

In an interview with Al-Jazeera on Friday evening, Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said that the simultaneous intrusions into banks raise suspicions among the competent authorities that they may be coordinated.

Mawlawi added that the security services will work to maintain security and order and will refer the perpetrators to the competent judiciary.

The Lebanese Minister of Interior also said - in his interview with Al Jazeera - that the Ministry of the Interior is not a party to the banks, and will not be in the face of depositors.

For his part, the Discriminatory Public Prosecutor in Lebanon, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, issued a judicial warrant to pursue what he described as criminal acts committed in several banks in Lebanon and to arrest those involved.

Oueidat called for working to reveal the extent to which these actions are linked to each other, and to arresting the instigators of them as armed robberies, and that their aim is to disrupt banking work in Lebanon and cause more financial and economic crises.

These statements come after recording 5 new raids on banks in Beirut and the south yesterday, Friday, by Lebanese who want to recover their money deposited in these banks.

Under the threat of real weapons or just plastic toys, the intruders were in most cases able to recover part of their dollar deposits.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon had urged the authorities to hold accountable those involved in verbal and physical attacks on banks, and said that the banks themselves would not tolerate.

Because of the increasing intrusions, the banks decided to close their branches for 3 days, while Al-Jazeera correspondent reported an increase in the exchange rate of the dollar against the Lebanese pound on the black market to 38,000 pounds per dollar.

Since the outbreak of the worst economic crisis in Lebanon 3 years ago, commercial banks have prevented most depositors from withdrawing their savings, leaving many residents unable to pay the cost of life's basics.


Depositors’ “uprising”

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Depositors Association said that what is happening is an "uprising" that is a natural and rightful reaction to what it described as the aggression of banks by robbing depositors' savings.

The association added - in a statement - that the banks rejected financial solutions that achieve a minimum level of justice by distributing losses, and manipulated depositors' money to finance what it called "corruption networks."

To get out of the crisis, the association proposed two options for the solution: the first is to declare that the banks have stopped paying and must declare their bankruptcy and liquidate their properties to return deposits within a fair financial plan, and the second is chaos and liberating deposits by force and insisting that the banks do not stop paying, but they are holding depositors’ money.

For his part, a spokesman for the Lebanese Depositors Association said that the recent bank storming operations are the beginning and will continue until all rights are restored, as he put it.

The association stated - on its Facebook page - that depositors took control of 8 banks yesterday, Friday, and said that "the war to restore deposits has begun, and depositors' anger will only be extinguished by restoring their full rights."

In light of the current crisis, more than 80% of the population of Lebanon is below the poverty line, the unemployment rate is close to 30%, and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar.


budget draft

With officials and MPs collapsing in the face of bank storming operations, the Lebanese parliament resumed discussion on Friday of the 2022 draft budget, and agreed to increase the salaries of public sector employees, military personnel and retirees three times.

However, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri adjourned the session to September 26, after losing the quorum.

During the session, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati stressed that the country needs to be saved, calling for the renunciation of "populism" and to act in a "spirit of cooperation".

Mikati said that the emergency budget prepared by the government aims to address the living conditions of citizens and ensure financial stability.

He added that it is a "corrective budget for a transitional phase and has an emergency character," stressing that "all the foundations of the state are fractured."