Ana Maria Guzelian and Noemi Jabois
Beirut, 24 Feb. With all his savings imprisoned in the bank due to the “corralito” in Lebanon and mounting debts to pay medical bills for his cancer-stricken wife, Ahmad Al Hajjar’s father went to a bank loan to set themselves on fire to gain access to their own money.
His story is similar to that of many other Lebanese who, since the outbreak of a severe economic crisis in the country at the end of 2019, can only withdraw limited amounts of cash in dollars or its equivalent in Lebanese pounds at an exchange rate more than five times less than the black market.
For those who had saved in local currency, their money is now almost useless, since in just three years the Lebanese pound has gone from 1,507 units to the dollar to more than 80,000 on the parallel market, triggering a number of desperate acts for part of the savers.
LIVES LOST
Al Hajjar assured EFE that, in his case, they first exhausted “all” legal avenues, but the bank still did not give them access to their savings as his mother’s health continued to deteriorate, his father therefore decided to take a drastic measure.
“He went by force to the bank to recover his money, he was going to set himself on fire just to take his own money”, says the young man between two sobs.
All their savings were in the bank, including the profits obtained after the sale of two plots of land and three stores: approximately 80,000 dollars and, on the other hand, 750 million Lebanese pounds which they had converted into local currency convinced by the bank barely two months before the onset of the crisis.
With no access to more than a scrap of that money each month, when their mother fell ill, they had to borrow money to pay for the constant visits to hospitals, where thousands of dollars were left behind. before we learned that the woman was suffering from cancer.
“My father would go (to the bank) and ask what his right was, but they wouldn’t give it to him. Eventually, we had debts to people and how were we going to repay them?” explained Al Hajjar, whose mother also needed medicine and medical attention.
The young man’s father only managed to get the branch to pay him $25,000 when he opted to use ‘force’, a move that cost him several days of arrest and sparked a meltdown heart attack to his grandfather, who “died instantly” after learning that the son had been arrested.
“This year, we lost two martyrs because of the banks, the bank killed two of ours. My mother and my grandfather died,” Al Hajjar lamented.
HIS MOTHER AS A WEAPON
While over the past three years many affected by the “corralito” have chosen to go to their bank with guns or cans of gasoline, Hussain Hassan Saado’s light bulb went on when a old woman successfully raided a nearby branch of her office in Beirut.
He knew that to save his own money he would have to resort to violence and he was not interested in being handcuffed, but he thought his mother, aged 90 and with many drugs to pay, had a chance. access his. without resorting to guns or knives.
According to what he told EFE, he went to his mother’s bank and explained that the woman is very old and lives on the seventh floor, so he could only get her to withdraw a small sum in Lebanese pounds when the public light made one of its rare appearances and could use the elevator.
In the context of the crisis, the public electricity supply arrives for a few hours a day in the best of cases and at totally random times.
The next day, Saado took her mother to the branch with the help of several people, and the security guards let them in thanks to the manager, who still thought the old woman was trying to withdraw money.
“When we told him we wanted our money, he opened the account, saw it was in dollars and was stunned. That’s when the operation started (…) He kept not to repeat that he could not give it to us and I told him that we would not leave from there, ”says the man, laughing at the memory of the situation.
Saado was aware that things would take a long time, so he brought with him medicine and food for his mother.
During the negotiations, the regional director of the entity, the security forces, the intelligence and the press arrived, whereas they called the Association of the depositors for their part.
Under increasing pressure and the old woman’s fatigue, the bank eventually agreed to deliver 10,800 of the $21,000 in the account, and they were allowed to leave once the media left the area, 9 a.m. after the start of the “operation”.
“As we did not attack anyone and there was no violence, there were no weapons, they spoke to the prosecutor and there were no charges. We are left with all due respect,” Saado said. EFE
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(Picture / Video)