Activists Storm Banks Protesting Illegal Capital Controls

A group of protesters on Saturday stormed some banks in Beirut to protest against undeclared capital control measures, amid an unprecedented economic crisis and nationwide protests gripping the country.

Dozens of angry activists stormed a bank saying one of their friends was not allowed to cash a cheque due to the control measures.

The move comes as protesters mark the 73rd of protests against corruption and mismanagement.

“This is so frustrating,” one activist said, “banks are banning us from using our own money,” he added.

Faced with a grinding US dollar liquidity crisis, Lebanon's banks have since September imposed increasingly tight restrictions on dollar withdrawals and transfers abroad in an attempt to conserve dwindling foreign currency reserves.

This has fuelled tensions in the debt-ridden country, where a two-month-old protest movement is demanding the removal of political leaders deemed incompetent and corrupt.

Activists say ordinary depositors are footing the bill for a liquidity crisis worsened by politicians, senior civil servants and bank owners who used their influence to get their hefty savings out of the country.

Many of the country's top leaders own, or have large shares in, several banks.

As Lebanon's protest movement enters its third month, demonstrators are increasingly targeting banks for trapping their savings.

As a result of informal capital controls, the unofficial value of the Lebanese pound against the dollar has dropped by around 30 percent.

The Lebanese currency has been pegged to the greenback at around 1,500 for two decades and the currencies are used interchangeably in daily life.