“Lebanon Debate”
The file of suspicious withdrawals from the accounts of a number of BankMed depositors entered a new judicial turn, after it was learned that the Public Prosecutor of Appeal in Beirut, Judge Raja Al-Hamoush, had filed a lawsuit against the director of the bank’s branch in Hamra, Samer Al-Saba, against the backdrop of seizing depositors’ funds exceeding $4 million in value. He referred the file to the first investigating judge in Beirut, Rula Othman.
According to information, suspicions center around Al-Sabaa, before fleeing, photographing the signatures of account holders and using them to issue checks in their names, which allowed sums of money to be withdrawn from their accounts without their knowledge or consent. These are facts that are today the subject of a judicial investigation to determine their truth and the full responsibilities resulting from them.
Al-Hamoush claimed, based on Articles 672, 454, 459, and 210 of the Penal Code, in a judicial step that restored the file to its true size, after it remained confined throughout the review period between the depositors and the bank, which insisted, according to the documents attached to the complaint, that the current operations on the accounts be considered correct.
The case goes back to a criminal complaint filed by lawyer Sakhr Shahid Al-Hashem on June 25, 2025, through his agency on behalf of a group of depositors, against the Bank of the Mediterranean and anyone whom the investigation shows to be an actor, instigator, partner, or accomplice, for crimes of breach of trust, forgery, use of forgery, and money laundering.
According to the complaint, the threads in the file began after one of the depositors discovered, when reviewing a joint account statement with his wife in March 2025, that there was a withdrawal of $400,000 that neither of them had made.
Upon review of the process, it became clear, according to the plaintiffs’ account, that it was carried out by means of a check whose issuance request was attributed to the wife, while the latter denied that she had requested the check or signed the documents related to it.
Hence, the audit process expanded to include other accounts belonging to family members, revealing, according to the complaint, additional withdrawals from a number of individual and joint accounts, despite their owners confirming that they did not request their implementation and did not make withdrawals with the recorded values.
The complaint indicates that the total amounts in dispute exceeded $4 million, distributed among several accounts.
The account holders did not resort directly to the judiciary, as the documents attached to the complaint show a long series of reviews and correspondence with the bank, which included asking its management to investigate the operations and return the funds.
The complaint states that, at one stage of the review, one of the depositors was informed that there was an error on the part of the bank and that the amount of $400,000 would be returned to his account, but that did not happen.
Later, the bank informed the account holders that the file had been referred to the Customer Protection Department to conduct the necessary investigations, before it addressed to them, on May 8, 2025, a letter in which it stated that the investigations it had conducted showed, according to its position, that the ongoing operations on the accounts were correct.
Here the bank’s responsibility emerges in answering questions that can no longer be summarized in an internal book: How did these amounts leave the depositors’ accounts? How were the operations carried out that the account holders deny carrying out? How did the bank’s internal investigation conclude that it was valid, at a time when the case resulted in a judicial claim against the manager of one of its branches?
The depositors rejected the bank’s position and insisted on their right to take legal measures. The case was later transferred to the judiciary, where Judge Raja Al-Hamoush took a decisive step by prosecuting Al-Sabaa and referring the file to the first investigating judge in Beirut, Rola Othman.
In this context, Al-Hamoush notes the seriousness of dealing with a file that does not tolerate formal treatment, especially since the case relates to depositors’ funds exceeding $4 million, and suspicions related to signatures, checks, and withdrawals from several accounts. The Public Prosecution was not satisfied with what the bank’s internal reviews concluded, but rather placed the facts before judicial investigation to reveal the truth of what happened and determine responsibilities.
Thus, the issue is no longer just a banking objection between a depositor and a bank. The party that was supposed to protect its clients’ money finds itself today facing a judicial file related to millions of dollars that, according to its owners, were withdrawn from their accounts without their knowledge, while one of its officials has become a defendant before the court.
Al-Hamoush’s move placed the file where it should be: under judicial supervision, far from any attempt to confine the case within the walls of the bank or be satisfied with the results of its internal investigations.
