The investor, a heavyset man in a gray polo shirt, sat back in a plastic chair in his hardware store and sighed, unable to explain how his life savings had vanished so quickly into thin air, The New York Times reported.
"It's a disaster, a tsunami," he said. "Some farmers mortgaged their fields and brought in cash. Others sold land they had inherited from their parents. Teachers gave up all their savings. Old people lost everything they had."
The money disappeared, judicial authorities say, in a billion-dollar pyramid scheme that has riveted Lebanon, The New York Times's Robert F. Worth writes from Tura. Its mastermind, a businessman named Salah Ezzedine, was charged with fraud on Saturday and is being called the "Lebanese Bernie Madoff" in local newspapers. Bankers say it is the biggest fraud of its kind this country has ever seen.
But the dollar figures have drawn less attention here than Mr. Ezzedine's close links with Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement. Many of the investors -- mostly Shiites living in Beirut and southern villages like this one -- say those party links were the reason they chose to risk their hard-earned savings with a man who offered 40 and 50 percent profits but never showed any paperwork.
The scandal has embarrassed the party, which prides itself on a reputation for honesty and selfless piety. It has also illustrated the way many of Lebanon's Shiites, despite their ascent from near feudal poverty just a few decades ago, remain in some ways a nation apart. Their residual distrust of mainstream Lebanese institutions, which helped fuel Hezbollah's rise as a virtual state within a state, also appears to have made them vulnerable to Mr. Ezzedine's schemes.
"We got guarantees that were stronger than any bank," said the investor here, who like others associated with Mr. Ezzedine, spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Asked whether he meant Hezbollah, he declined to answer, The Times said.
Hezbollah's general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, denied in a speech last week that the party had any official connection with Mr. Ezzedine. But a few days later, during a Ramadan dinner with Hezbollah supporters where he appeared by video link, Mr. Nasrallah conceded that the party would in practice be held responsible, and said it was setting up a "crisis network" to assess each investor's losses. Several Hezbollah officials lost money, and at least one has filed suit against Mr. Ezzedine.
There have even been calls for Hezbollah to compensate the investors. So far, the party has said it will not do so, and it is easy to see why. The losses among southern Shiites alone run into the hundreds of millions, and Hezbollah is still struggling to rebuild the houses destroyed during its devastating monthlong war with Israel in 2006.
Mr. Ezzedine, 49, remains a mysterious figure. He was best known as the owner of Dar el-Hadi, a publishing house that specialized in religious titles and is based in the heart of Dahieh, Beirut's Shiite southern suburb. More recently, in 2007, he founded Al Mustathmir, a financial institution based in Beirut that focused on money management. He was known as a deeply religious and charitable man, with a gift for winning people's friendship. |