The financial crisis in Lebanon is putting residents in such dire straits that they are going to extreme and drastic measures to access money.
Their own.
Just this week, two people robbed two different banks. Their demands were not what a typical bank robber asks for; they both wanted to be able to withdraw their own money. That’s right; they had to put their freedom in jeopardy in order to access their own funds.
In one incident, a woman with a gun was reportedly accompanied by activists and claimed her gun was a toy. She was able to receive $13,000 of her money in the bank. She said her total deposits in BLOM Bank was $20,000.
The situation that put her in dire straits was that she needed funds to help pay for her sister’s cancer treatments, and when she went to withdraw money to give to her sister, the bank was only allowing her to withdraw $200 per month.
Here is what she was quoted saying in an AP story.
“I had begged the branch manager before for my money, and I told him my sister was dying, didn’t have much time left. I reached a point where I had nothing else to lose.”
In the other incident, a man with a gun held up a Bankmed Bank branch with the same intent of simply withdrawing his own funds.
Thanks to the government’s errors, the country has spent the last three years in a full-blown economic crisis. To prevent people from taking all their money and putting it in banks in more stable countries, Lebanese banks started limiting the amount of money customers can withdraw from their accounts.
Fears are that these types of armed robberies where people just want access to their money will increase now that it seems to be working.
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