Sometimes the armed people demanding money aren't the ones in the wrong.
Last August, Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, a food delivery driver, walked into a branch of the Federal Bank of Lebanon in Beirut, brandished a shotgun, fired three warning shots and demanded cash. |
But in a twist on the conventions of bank robbery, the money Hussein sought to steal was his own. He needed it to cover his ailing father's medical bills but had been unable to get it legally because Lebanon's banks had imposed strict withdrawal limits amid a tanking economy. |
Police arrived, and there was a standoff, which ended after the bank agreed to release $35,000 of Hussein's savings. He was hailed as a hero by many in Lebanon, and the heist has inspired copycat robberies by frustrated depositors trying to get their hands on their own money. |
An Opinion video we published this week explores this extraordinary trend, focusing on the cases of Hussein and Sali Hafiz, a Lebanese interior designer, who held up a Beirut branch of BLOM Bank in order to pay for her sister's cancer treatments. |
The film argues that the true thieves are not citizens like Hussein and Hafiz but the corrupt financial and political leaders who have helped run the Lebanese economy into the ground. |
"The politicians in Lebanon are the real robbers," Hafiz says in the film. "The owners of the banks are the real robbers. They caused the economic crisis. They smuggled the money outside Lebanon." |
Prosecutors from several European countries have been investigating Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon's central bank, who has been accused of laundering public money in Europe. And last Thursday, Lebanese prosecutors charged Salameh, his brother and an associate with embezzlement, money laundering and illicit enrichment. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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