Fulfillment & Betrayal

The Palestinian businessman Naim Attallah has just published Fulfillment & Betrayal 1975-1995, the third installment of his autobiography. His first two offerings The Boy in England and In Touch with his Roots tells of his arrival in London as an immigrant and penniless student (he once worked as a hospital porter and laborer) and his impressive rise as a financier. He began his career in banking as a foreign exchange dealer with Crédit Foncier d’Algérie et Tunisie in the City of London. He went on to become the protégé of the brilliant but ultimately flawed Palestinian banker, Yusuf Beidas who, in early ‘60s, made Lebanon’s Intrabank the biggest financial institution in the Middle East. Intra’s collapse in 1966 has been called by many a national witchhunt and a conspiracy as well as a key milestone in the subsequent unraveling of Lebanon. It certainly destroyed Beidas, who died a broken man