UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Lebanon's financial collapse was caused by "something similar to a Ponzi scheme", according to a video of comments he made while visiting Beirut this week and confirmed by someone who attended the meeting.
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Lebanon is in the third year of an economic meltdown that began in 2019 when the financial system collapsed under the weight of huge state debt - the result of decades of corruption and mismanagement - and the unsustainable way it was financed.
Critics of the Lebanese authorities have compared the financial system to a Ponzi scheme, depending on fresh borrowing to pay back existing debt.
The central bank has denied this.
"As far as I understand what has happened in Lebanon is that Lebanon was using something similar to a Ponzi scheme..., which means that together with of course corruption and other, probably, forms of stealing, the financial system has collapsed," Guterres said in the video circulated on social media.
