Lebanon’s Association of Banks (ABL) issued a strong statement on Tuesday, rejecting the Government’s financial recovery plan passed last week.
ABL refused the plan approved by the Deputy Prime Minister, Saade Al-Shami, which disavows the state and the Central Bank “from their obligations to pay off the debts incurred by them and to load the entire loss, exceeding $70 billion, on depositors after the plan eliminated the banks’ funds.”
According to ABL, the Lebanese state had canceled the deposits with a “pen scratch” resulting from “the genius of the experts.”
That is despite ABL’s alternative plans, which aim to establish a fund that invests some of the assets of the state in order to restore depositors’ rights in the medium and long terms.
Per the statement, the pretext that these revenues belonged to the people not to the depositors is unacceptable, “as if draining the depositors’ money to support the people was permissible and the depositors’ recovery of their money is forbidden.”
Worth noting that, firstly and ultimately, depositors are not alien entities but the people in their majority. The names might differ in the government’s agenda but they are just one and the same.
In that, ABL criticized the plan said to aim to keep the future income of the state as the property of future generations. “This is unacceptable because the savings of parents belong to future generations as well,” ABL stressed.
The Association of Banks concluded by renewing its rejection of that plan and proclaiming standing together with depositors to reject it.
