Word: lebanons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Business magnate Salah Ezzeddine was known as a pious, generous man. Hailing from a small Shi'ite Muslim town in southern Lebanon, he was a success story among the country's poorest, historically marginalized religious sect. With his reputation for generosity (he built a stadium and a mosque for his hometown of Maaroub, sponsored pilgrimages to Mecca and published children's books), few were suspicious when Ezzeddine promised investors a share of his business with the lure of outstanding returns - from 20% to 40% - and few details of how the plan worked or guarantees or paperwork. Still, what he seemed...
...effects of the global financial crisis. But rumors swirled in the press of a pyramid scheme of more than $1 billion, and the local media dubbed Ezzeddine the Lebanese Bernie Madoff. Last weekend the Lebanese government charged him with fraud. All across the Shi'ite-populated regions of Lebanon, thousands of small investors - many of whom bundled small sums of money with their neighbors to give to Ezzeddine - feel betrayed by both the man and the organization. "I inherited $100,000 from my father to continue my studies. I invested them with Ezzeddine, and now all my dreams are destroyed...
...able to gain people's confidence easily due to his connections with Hizballah," says Mohammad Duhaini, the mayor of Toura, another town in southern Lebanon, where he says at least 250 people invested with Ezzeddine. Says Duhaini: "Most of those who dealt with him were supporters of Hizballah [and] many people were encouraged to do business with Ezzeddine due to Hizballah's propaganda for him." Indeed, one Hizballah source told TIME that some top leaders did business with Ezzeddine. The Lebanese press has published unsubstantiated reports that his enterprise collapsed when a check he wrote to a senior Hizballah official...
...seems surprising that the leaders of an institution as sophisticated as Hizballah would fall for a simple Ponzi scheme. But the organization relies on a network of businessmen and fundraisers such as Ezzeddine, not just in southern Lebanon but also in West Africa, South America and wherever expatriate Lebanese do business. Hizballah has been trying to become financially independent from its main patron, Iran (which has its own financial problems), and earlier this year, a Hizballah official told TIME the organization is close to becoming completely self-sustaining. What effect the Ezzeddine scandal has on those plans remains...
...scandal for Hizballah might come not in dollars and cents but in damage to its reputation for honesty, competence and integrity, which, given its status as the world's most formidable organization of guerrilla fighters, is what makes the Shi'ite political party popular not just in Lebanon but in the wider Arab world. Those traits were on display when Hizballah engineers and social-service workers fanned out immediately in the aftermath of the war with Israel in 2006 to assess damage and offer assistance to its supporters who had lost their homes and business. Months later, Nasrallah launched...