United for Lebanon and Depositors Outcry Association: We Have Full Right to Legitimate Self-Defense To Regain Deposits

United for Lebanon and Depositors Outcry Association: We Have Full Right to Legitimate Self-Defense To Regain Deposits

(With video footage; attached link below)

A lump in their hearts, tears in their eyes, and aching souls; this was the case of depositors and their lawyers in front of Mount Lebanon’s Justice Palace on December 16, 2021. Their families’ livelihoods shattering while justice being assassinated. The reign of corruption has proven stronger than that of accountability; the Judiciary crippled in the ‘Jungle State of Lebanon’.

In the name of justice, another delinquency was committed against Lebanese bank depositors. The call for a sit-in in front of Mount Lebanon’s Justice Palace in Baabda by United for Lebanon anti-corruption alliance (UFL) and Depositors Outcry Association (DOA) “Sarkhat Al Mudiein” took effect on Thursday, December 16, 2021, while First Investigative Judge of Mount Lebanon, Nicolas Mansour, was handed two callback requests to halt his investigations. The requests were filed by Michel Mecattaf and his taxi company for money transfers during two long awaited investigative sessions in front of Judge Mansour, after the Court of Cassation had rejected the appeals filed by Mecattaf, Abderrahman Fayed operating a money exchange business, and Mia Dabbagh (the Head of Banking Control Commission of Central Bank of Lebanon). The result: Obstructing the course of justice once again and further suffering of the depositors, with the fear of pushing their lawsuits into a tunnel of callback requests and suspension, same as for Beirut’s seaport explosion recent investigations, due to political motives and agendas.

The ‘Theft of the Century’ remains unnoticed to Lebanese courts, while international justice is pointing fingers and seeking ways to hold the thieves accountable. In detail, the two scheduled interrogation sessions for the cases no. 270/2021 and 16/2021 were blocked, with the Governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank, Riad Salameh, Dabbagh, Mecattaf, SGBL bank and its CEO Antoine Sehnaoui, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), among others, being the defendants. Charges of the two cases, the famous Mecattaf case one of them, involve massive money laundering operations and the embezzlement of funds aimed at supporting the Lebanese pound and consumption goods during the year 2020, among other crimes.

In a public statement during a sit-in in front of the Justice Palace, Attorney Rami Ollaik of UFL denounced the ‘manipulative’ callback requests just when the unceasing efforts of UFL and DOA started to pay off. He furthered that the matter went beyond the cases at hand to question the essence of the Lebanese Judiciary as a whole, and that a decision must be taken at the highest levels in Lebanon to prevent such polemics from obstructing justice. He added, “Depositors today stand helpless with a main question: Either there exists a judicial authority, or not at all”, with referring to Article 184 of the Lebanese Penal Code as the only remaining resort. The said article permits committing crime in defense of oneself, their money, or the money of others, in the course of the ‘Right to Legitimate Public Defense’. The failure of the justice system has pushed depositors to this last option.

Lebanese banking practices have crossed the reasonable legal and moral limits. Like many, the accounts of the Egyptian depositor at Fransabank, Ayad Ibrahim, and his wife were deliberately closed by the bank on December 10, 2021 in response to their protesting the latest bank exploitation measures. Add to their desperate need for their own money for the treatment of a family member suffering from a terminal illness, they were left with no alternate source of income. All they received were two ‘imposed’ banker’s checks of their deposit amounts, which effectively cover 15 percent of the value of their own funds at best.

President of DOA, Alaa Khorchid, in turn valued the efforts of the depositors present at the sit-in, while he condemned political manoeuvres dictating the role of Lebanese judges to holding trials only against the weak and unprivileged while acquitting the influential. He added, “Depositors have become completely exposed, after the ‘Palace of Justice’ has turned to the ‘Palace of Injustice’”. Khorchid concluded that all Lebanese banks, their owners, chairpersons and board members have become legitimate targets for depositors, and that there would be no retreat after all that has happened.

A number of the lawsuit plaintiffs, including the 79 year old Suad Sakakini, and Simon Barrak, whose bank refused to pay a fraction of his own money to cover the expenses of treating his cancer-stricken wife, as well as others, voiced their willingness to seize control of what was rightfully theirs under Article 184. They emphasized that they have become forced to commit crime in their attempts to redeem what was stolen from them.

To watch the video from the sit-in, visit the link below:

https://www.unitedforlebanon.com/en/videos/mppL9-NT8cw