Bank customers carry placards against the restrictive measures during a protest organized by the Union of Lebanese Expatriates Depositors and Depositors’ Outcry, a group campaigning for the rights of depositors, in Beirut, Lebanon, on July 4. File Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA
Almost six years into Lebanon’s worst financial crisis, bank depositors continue to endure severe financial hardship and the trauma of having lost their life savings overnight — a shock that upended their lives and left many suffering from psychological distress.
Their trauma, deepened by persistent inaction from an inept and corrupt ruling elite and a complete absence of accountability, remains so profound that, despite fresh promises and some progress by the new reformist government, uncertainty and doubt still prevail.
President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who took office last January, have pledged to implement long-overdue reforms — largely ignored by their predecessors — and to secure the recovery of all bank deposits.
A major step came in April, when Parliament passed a law lifting banking secrecy; giving the central bank and auditors access to 10 years of records. If enforced, it could help uncover fraud, trace capital flight and expose those who profited from the crisis.
Another key development was the banking sector restructuring law passed July 31. However, resolving the crisis also depends on the Financial Stability Law, which aims to address losses and assign responsibility, including to the central bank and commercial banks.
Depositors were the primary victims of the country’s financial meltdown, which the World Bank described as “a deliberate depression” orchestrated by the ruling elite — and ranked among the three most severe economic collapses globally since the mid-19th century.
They simply never imagined that the political elite, financial officials and banking class all would be complicit in the scheme and go so far as to steal their money and life savings.
No serious attempts have been made by successive governments since the crisis began to stop the financial collapse. No capital controls have ever been imposed, no credible financial or economic recovery plan has been implemented, no one has been held accountable, and the ruling elite and banking class continue with business as usual.
Worse still, efforts by greedy bankers and corrupt government officials to resolve the crisis at the time clearly aimed to do so at the expense of the depositors by wiping out the bulk of their savings, according to financial analysts.
“No one wants to bear responsibility: not the banks, nor the state, nor the central bank,” said Nicolas Chikhani, an economic and banking expert, referring to the estimated $83 billion frozen bank deposits. “For sure, it is not the depositors’ responsibility.”
Chikhani explained that the central bank was wrong to lend excessively to the government, and the banks were wrong to concentrate an excessive portion of their assets with the central bank — far beyond the 20% prudential limit on credit exposure to a single borrower.
Ultimately, the nearly 2 million depositors bore the brunt of the crisis. They lost their money and access to their bank accounts, with the vast majority plunging into poverty, facing humiliation and suffering from psychological trauma.
Those most affected were retirees, who relied heavily on their bank savings for their livelihood.
Elvira Habib, a 65-year-old university professor, and her 70-year-old husband, Nadim, were a living example of how the majority of depositors have been struggling to make ends meet.
“I never thought for a second that they [the officials] would lead us to collapse,” Elvira Habib told UPI, her voice trembling as she fought back tears. “Overnight, we discovered they had stolen our money. … Honestly, you start thinking about suicide — or even killing them.”
Adding to their bad luck, her husband — an engineer who had spent 15 years working under tough conditions in Erbil, in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region— decided to retire just days before the financial crisis erupted. His end-of-service compensation of $170,000, along with Elvira’s own severance pay, became trapped in the bank, alongside their original savings.
Suddenly, they could no longer access their $1.2 million bank account and were forced at the beginning to survive on roughly $300 per month- a withdrawal ceiling set by the central bank. Depending on the type of account, monthly limits initially ranged from $150 to $400 and were gradually increased to between $500 and $800 by July 2025.
These limited withdrawals were nowhere near enough to cover their basic monthly expenses, which amounted to at least $3,000 for medical insurance, medications, generator fees, water and food.
“The days of dining out, seeing a specialist or even dreaming of a vacation are long gone,” Elvira Habib said. Hosting their children and grandchildren, who usually come from France for vacation, has become difficult as they no longer have the means to make their visits enjoyable.
While many families have relied on their children working abroad for full or partial financial support, Elvira Habib and her husband were determined not to overburden theirs.
Nabil Abou Dargham, a 63-year-old communications specialist who worked for the United Nations for 30 years, also was on his own. At first, he thought the crisis was “a passing cloud,” until everything crumbled like an “avalanche,” taking away long years of hard work and any hope for the future.
Abou-Dargham, who survived the 1975-90 civil war and the country’s many political and military setbacks — in addition to a stressful job — said he had never felt the “anxiety and anguish” he has experienced since 2019, when the financial disaster began.
“This forced me to confront a new reality — a new existence, a new life — one I had to coexist with, like living alongside an enemy,” he told UPI.
Now, he keeps a financial notebook to track every payment and monitor monthly expenses — which usually means prioritizing the $500 electricity and generator bills, reducing the quantity of provisions while trying to maintain quality and cutting out anything that could threaten his financial survival.
All of this, he said, has come with deep anxiety and ongoing melancholy – a common feeling shared by the majority of those impacted.
Dr. Elio Sassine, a psychiatrist and trauma specialist, estimated that between 70% and 80% of the population is experiencing trauma of varying severity — initially triggered by the financial crisis and later intensified by the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
“Whether someone lost $1,000 or $500,000 to the bank, the impact was the same: their money was taken, and they could do nothing about it,” Sassine told UPI. “Entire families suddenly found themselves without resources — without any means to survive.”
Worse, they were left struggling with depression, anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder and a constant fear for the future — and with no energy left to keep demonstrating, to pressure the ruling elite to return their money and be held accountable.
“With no money, people were exhausted, doing everything they could just to secure the basics so they wouldn’t die,” Sassine said.
One of his patients, a 90-year-old tailor, was so desperate to find work that he asked his doctor if he knew anyone who might hire him again. “How could such a vulnerable person work again?” he asked rhetorically.
What hurt most was the humiliation inflicted on depositors at the start of the crisis when they were allowed to withdraw only a small amount from their accounts, pushing many, like Elvira Habib, to stop going to the banks.
According to Richard Pharaon, president of the Association of French Depositors in Lebanon, nearly half of the estimated $137 billion in deposits already has been wiped out. Depositors were forced to withdraw their dollar savings in Lebanese pounds at deeply unfavorable rates of exchange or to trade banker’s checks for cash U.S. dollars — losing up to 85% of their trapped savings
“They had no choice. … They ended up being the biggest losers,” Pharaon told UPI, sharply criticizing fresh efforts by the central bank to reduce total deposits to $50 billion — removing so-called suspicious accounts — as part of a new plan to gradually return the funds over the coming years.
Pharaon has little hope, saying “nothing has changed – the mafia is still in place, no forensic investigation has been conducted and there’s been no accountability.”
Without accountability and without putting on trial the officials and bankers who secretly transferred an estimated $11 billion abroad; it will take a long time for depositors to recover from the injustice they were subjected to, Sassine concluded.
