France24 Interview about Banking Crisis in Lebanon

In an interview with France24, Prof. Dr. Erick Behar-Villegas, Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at Berlin International, analyzed the current banking crisis in Lebanon, where the population has experienced high unemployment rates and a financial distress due to the limited access to their own funds in banks.

Among others Prof. Dr. Erick Behar-Villegas pointed out that "it was a ticking time bomb (...). People put their dollars in their accounts; then in 2019, companies started to look for dollars to do imports. And since the state was in debt with the banks that lent it those dollars from the people, everything collapsed".

Indeed, at the end of 2019, the entities did not have enough liquidity to deliver dollars to all the savers who had deposited in that currency and the system collapsed, which led banks to impose informal capital control measures, causing dollar accounts to be virtually blocked.

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