Sali Hafiz held up a Beirut branch of BLOM Bank last week, taking by force some $13,000 US in savings in her sister's account frozen by capital controls that were imposed overnight by commercial banks in 2019 but never made legal.
Thomson ReutersInterior designer Sali Hafiz, who is on the run from authorities after forcing a Lebanese bank to release her family savings, speaks during an interview on Tuesday in the Bekaa Valley."We are in the country of mafias. If you are not a wolf, the wolves will eat you," she told Reuters, standing on a dirt track somewhere in Lebanon's rugged eastern Bekaa valley where she has since been in hiding.
A growing number are taking matters into their own hands, exasperated by a three-year financial implosion that authorities have left to fester — leading the World Bank to describe it as "orchestrated by the country's elite." When her sister began losing hope she would be able to afford costly treatment to help regain mobility and speech impaired by brain cancer, and the bank declined to provide the savings, Hafiz said she decided to act.
George Haj, head of the bank employees syndicate, gestures as he speaks during an interview in Beirut on Tuesday.
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