Lebanese police have recently arrested a resident of the southern Lebanese town of Job Jenin, after holding several employees at a local bank branch for several hours, until the branch manager was forced to withdraw $ 50,000 from the man’s account and transfer them to him in cash.
In the past, Lebanese banks allowed citizens to deposit money in Lebanese pounds or alternatively in US dollars, and then withdraw it in the same currency in which the money was deposited.
About two years ago, due to the severe economic crisis and the fear of the banks collapsing, the banks stopped allowing dollar withdrawal. Instead, all withdrawals must be made exclusively with Lebanese money, and even those who deposited their money in dollars were forced to convert the currencies into Lebanese pounds and withdraw them from the bank account.
The major disadvantage of this method, from the point of view of customers, lies in the fact that the official rate of the Lebanese pound is significantly higher than the true value of the pound as it is traded in the open markets of Lebanon. Thus, a person who deposited his money in dollars and wanted to withdraw it, had to give up about 65 percent of the value of the money he deposited, plus pay a fee for converting the currencies.
The ‘robber’ from Job Genin, demanded to receive his money in dollars as he deposited it. The branch explained to him that this was impossible, and in response he pulled out a weapon and took seven of the place’s employees hostage, sprayed them with fuel and announced that if his money was not given to him and if the police tried to break into the place, he would set the place on fire.
After negotiations that lasted several hours, the bank’s management was forced to give the man what he wanted, and he managed to transfer the money during the commotion to his wife who was waiting outside and escaped with the money. Shortly afterwards the man was arrested by police, When the hunt for his wife began, she managed to hide her footprints, some claiming that she managed to escape from Lebanon, while leaving their children at home, who were later taken by relatives. According to reports, the procedure according to which Lebanese banks do not allow a dollar withdrawal is not enshrined in Lebanese law, and therefore the robber from Job Jenin is not actually a robber because he took his own money, which belongs to him by law and that the bank actually violated the law. The man will probably be charged in the end only for taking the hostages, but he claims that he treated them nicely throughout the incident, and that at the end of the ‘robbery’ he even apologized to them from the bottom of his heart.
Either way, the man has become the hero of Lebanon today, and many Lebanese citizens applaud him and loudly declare their support for his actions, saying the real bandits are the banks that keep them from spending the money they earned in the sweat of their brow before depositing it in their bank account.
