Trapped Funds: The Fate of Syrian Deposits in Lebanese Banks

For years, Lebanese banks served as a financial lifeline for Syrians seeking stability amid war, economic turmoil, and sanctions—offering access to US dollars (USD), trade channels, and relatively secure deposits. Syrian businessmen, elites, and government-linked entities held billions of USD in these institutions. But in October 2019, Lebanon’s banking system collapsed virtually overnight. Transfers abroad were blocked and depositors were locked out of their savings, trapping over USD 120 billion in foreign currency deposits. Thousands of Syrian depositors were suddenly cut off from their funds, losing a critical safety net. 

Beyond Lebanon, the fallout was immediate and severe in Syria. As dollar flows dried up, the Syrian pound (SYP) plunged, inflation surged, and the cost of essential imports rose sharply. The deep financial ties between the two countries meant that Syria’s fragile economy absorbed some of Lebanon’s shock, compounding its own collapse. However, isolating the specific impact of Lebanon’s crisis is difficult, as Syria was also grappling with external shocks such as the US Caesar Act. Today, following the collapse of the Assad regime and in the context of reconstruction, Syrian authorities have reached out to their Lebanese counterparts in search of a solution to the blocked deposits—funds that could prove vital to jumpstarting recovery. One of the most striking aspects of the crisis is the legal vacuum surrounding Lebanon’s banking restrictions. Despite the effective freezing of accounts since 2019, no formal capital control law has been enacted. This leaves Syrian depositors with little legal recourse to recover their funds. While some Lebanese citizens have taken banks to court, Syrian clients face additional obstacles, including limited legal standing, political sensitivities, and scrutiny over the origins of certain deposits.  

This legal vacuum is especially concerning given the scale of Syrian-owned assets believed to be stuck in Lebanese banks—potentially amounting to several billion dollars. Yet the true value of these deposits remains highly contested. The Central Bank of Lebanon (CBL) does not disaggregate deposit data by nationality, only by residency, making it nearly impossible to determine how much is held by Syrians. 

For example, in January 2020 the CBL estimated the non-resident private sector deposits in foreign currencies at Lebanese commercial banks at USD 28.4 billion. By January 2025, this had dropped to USD 20.9 billion. Assuming that only a small share of these accounts were opened by dual Syrian-Lebanese nationals under Lebanese citizenship, these figures offer a rough upper bound for Syrian deposits—since not all foreign non-resident accounts belong to Syrians. It is therefore unlikely that a 2020 report by Information International, a Beirut-based research consultancy, estimating Syrian deposits at USD 37–40 billion, is plausible. That same year, former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad publicly cited figures of USD 20–42 billion; the upper end of this range is also exaggerated. Without clear justification, Lebanese media and banking officials countered with more conservative estimates of USD 6 billion to USD 7 billion in 2020. In the following years, overall bank deposits in Lebanon declined, with no reason to believe that Syrian deposits were spared. Like other depositors, Syrian depositors took advantage of the CBL policies permitting limited withdrawals at unfavorable rates, gradually depleting account balances. As a result, by 2025, the former head of Lebanon’s Banking Control Commission stated that Syrian deposits do not exceed USD 3 billion. A 2025 report citing financial insiders in Beirut confirmed this estimate, while sources close to Syrian interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa placed the total between USD 3 and USD 4 billion. To grasp the significance of these figures, consider that the entire Syrian private banking sector—comprising 15 banks—held deposits amounting to SYP 15.9 trillion, or roughly USD 1.5 billion. In other words, even the most conservative estimates of Syrian funds trapped in Lebanon exceed all deposits held across Syria’s private banks. Trapped deposits also nearly match the private banking sector’s total assets of SYP 42 trillion in 2024, equivalent to around USD 3.9 billion at the average parallel-market rate of SYP 10,750 per USD. This stark comparison underscores not only the scale of the loss but also the extent to which Lebanon served as Syria’s financial nerve center. Its collapse left Syria not just poorer, but structurally weaker.