Bank deposits … and we do not lend to the state with dollars!

Riad Salameh was never as weak as he appeared yesterday in his interview with the Saudi channel “Al-Arabiya – Al-Hadath”. He came out of his cool more than once and is known for his coldness. There is no comparison between the interviews that the same presenter, Bassam Abu Zaid, gave on LBCI and those he had with him yesterday. In the past, Salameh was the “king of the screen” and sometimes seemed to be its “owner”. Yesterday, he seemed weak in an embarrassing defensive position. The importance of yesterday’s interview is not only in the form, but mainly in the content.

For the first time, Salameh announces with his mouth full that deposits in Lebanese banks will not be returned to their owners in dollars. The man who for 26 years sponsored the dollarization of deposits and the economy, decided yesterday to imitate “all the countries in the world, where depositors do not withdraw money from banks in a currency other than the national one.” With this phrase, he grants the security of the banks the right not to give depositors their money in the currency in which they were deposited, and with this phrase also, Salameh makes a “haircut” to the deposits, of value unknown. It did not specify at what exchange rate the deposits would be returned to their owners. In a clear manipulation of numbers and words, he claimed that more than $ 30 billion had been withdrawn from the banks, and that $ 20 billion of it was used to cancel debts. In practice, these deposits were not withdrawn, but were used to pay off loans owed to banks, in part by trading bank checks, which were sold at approximately 36 percent of their face value.
Once again, Salameh tossed the blocked deposit ball onto the bench court. He said clearly: “The deposits are in the banks, and the evidence is that no bank has failed. We gave the banks the dollars they wanted, plus $ 13 billion. And washing hands is one of the banks’ procedures when they say that “the Banque du Liban does not administer them, but only sets the policies.” Therefore, it says that the Banque du Liban gives banks all the dollars they want, but did not clarify whether it intended to return their deposits when they are due or give them a full refund. The sums that were deposited in the “central” (which is impossible), which, according to some estimates, amounted to about $ 70 billion, plus $ 13 billion, leaving only the “mandatory reserve”. He also did not specify if the dollars were returned to him in fictitious form (numbers on the screen), or if they were real dollars, which is also impossible.
At the same time, Salameh defended not giving depositors their money in pounds, saying that all countries in the world set caps on withdrawals.
It is striking in the words of Salameh that he “defamed” the banks for what they were committing to his patronage and knowledge, pointing out that in 3 years they had financed imports worth more than 60 billion dollars. At the Banque du Liban.

Exploiting the Integrity of the Criminal Audit: Bank Statement Needs Legal Amendments

In his interview, Salameh also exploded the narrative that the banking party had always promoted, in the sense that deposits were lost because the banks lent part of them to the state and deposited another part in the Banque du Liban, which in turn lent to the state. Salameh emphasized that the Banque du Liban did not lend the state dollars, but rather the Lebanese pound that it could print.
While Salameh, like other pillars of the ruling class, confirmed his acceptance of the criminal audit of the accounts of the Banque du Liban, he confirmed that he would hand over the state accounts to the Ministry of Finance, but destroyed the criminal audit therein. moment by stating that the disclosure of bank accounts in the Banque du Liban before either party needs legal reform. .
Salameh defended himself, surprising that politicians were not accountable and “the attack on the governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon is easy, because I am independent and not partisan.”

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