October 22, 2026
Seven years after the financial and monetary collapse in Lebanon, depositors are still suffering from a complete inability to recover their seized funds, amid the absence of any clear path by the Association of Banks and its president, Salim Sfeir, to determine responsibilities or return rights to their owners.
On the eve of the outbreak of the crisis on October 17, 2019, banks were competing fiercely to attract savings through attractive savings offers and programs and high interest rates, without the depositor – who considered his money to be in trust with a trustworthy institution – being aware of the secrets of budgets, financial engineering, or the nature of the investment and its risks.
As the crisis erupted, the banks denied their primary role in attracting this money, and placed responsibility on the state and the Bank of Lebanon, acting as a victim despite their involvement in seducing depositors and convincing some of them to transfer their deposits from dollars to pounds, leaving their customers to face their fate alone without providing any real achievement that protects their rights.
In this context, economic expert Bilal Alama confirmed, in an interview with the website, that the roots of the crisis go back to about ten years before the collapse, as a result of financing and investment practices similar to the “Ponzi Scheme,” in which several parties participated, including the state, the Bank of Lebanon, and banks, as well as some depositors and major merchants seeking quick and outrageous profits.
Alama explained that banks violated applicable international standards, such as the “IFRS 9” standard, by raising funds investment rates from 30% to 70 or 80% with political and monetary cover, and turning a blind eye on the part of the regulatory authorities, the Central Bank of Lebanon, and the government commissioner, which led to the emergence of a huge financial gap that ranged between 80 and 90 billion dollars.
He pointed out that the treatments led by the banks were limited to limited procedures and the circulation of circulars from the Bank of Lebanon to disburse small payments, in an effort to liquidate deposits and avoid incurring losses from their capital, stressing that the banking sector, which included a large number of banks exceeding the capacity of the Lebanese market, bears the greatest responsibility towards depositors as a result of the misuse of funds and the absence of accountability.
Alama concluded by emphasizing that deposits constitute a legally registered trust and cannot be written off, stressing that the real solution and the recovery of full funds requires opening the door to accountability wide, recovering the funds that were taken out of the country, and rejecting the political consensus to hold depositors alone responsible for the consequences of the crisis.
