Reuters, Beirut :
Like many Lebanese expatriates, Nadim Srour wired savings back as a nest egg for his return. Now those deposits have crumbled in an economic crisis and a Beirut blast has destroyed his home.
“Our lives turned 180 degrees,” said the 43-year-old who returned from the Gulf with his wife and two sons in September 2019 – a month before Lebanon’s banking system imploded and a year before the port explosion shattered a swathe of Beirut.
“Now we are ruined.”
His story is far from unique in a nation that piled up a mountain of public debt to rebuild after its 1975-1990 civil war, attracting savers with high interest rates, but squandered most of the cash amid mismanagement and corruption. The system that some economists likened to a state Ponzi scheme collapsed last year. Banks drew down the shutters on savers like Srour, who now face strict limits on the amount they can withdraw, while the real value of those deposits has been slashed as Lebanon’s pound has crashed.
