Reopening at Intra

The economy of Lebanon, battered by a loss of tourist business as a result of the Arab-Israeli war, got a welcome lift on the home front last week. After a 15-month shutdown in the wake of the biggest banking scandal in Lebanese history, Intra Bank reopened its doors for business. The reopening quickly drew a crowd so large that police had to be called to control it. Not surprisingly, the throng consisted mainly of Intra Bank customers anxious to get their savings out rather than to put more Lebanese pounds in.

The depositors should have little to worry about on this score. Intra Bank, when it collapsed in the fall of 1966 and sent Founder and Financier Yusef Bedas into hasty exile, turned out to hold loans of about $120 million made on virtually nonexistent collateral. But it also had another $217 million in gilt-edged investments, including majority ownership in prospering Middle East Airlines and a hunk of choice real estate on Paris' Champs Elysees. All that was needed was a plan to satisfy its creditors and the Lebanese government. This was provided by the U.S. banking firm of Kidder, Peabody & Co.

Under Kidder, Peabody's design to refloat Lebanon's most important bank, the airline, real estate and other holdings will all be spun off into a separate investment company. Large depositors, including the U.S. Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corp., which had $22 million in Intra as an export loan covering surplus crop shipments, will be paid off in stock in the new company. Investors with less than 250,000 Lebanese pounds (about $80,000) in the bank will be able to get half their money back within the next three years, will receive the other half in stock. Intra will also drop some of its branches abroad.

Everyone involved seems satisfied with the arrangement except, perhaps, Founder Bedas. Since the bank's closing he has been to Brazil and to Switzerland, where he was recently arrested for, of all things, illegal parking. Bedas is still being held while Swiss authorities consider an extradition request from Lebanon, which wants him on a criminal charge of fraudulent bankruptcy. But it is doubtful that Bedas will be extradited, or tried if he is. So much and so many were probably involved in Intra Bank's collapse that, with the bank in business again, Lebanon would just as soon forget the past.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.