The director general of Lebanon's Finance Ministry, who was on the team negotiating an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund, resigned from his post on Monday amid a rapidly worsening economic and financial crisis.
Alain Bifani, a veteran civil servant who held his post for two decades, said he was protesting the way leaders were handling the crisis and that he refuses to be a partner in what is happening.
Bifani's resignation was the second in two weeks by a member of Lebanon's negotiating team with the IMF - an indication of the gravity of the crisis and the difficulties facing those talks. Lebanon, one of the most indebted nations in the world, has asked the IMF for a bailout after defaulting on its sovereign debt, but the talks appear to be faltering, with hardly any progress made after more than 15 sessions.