“Today, everybody can say whatever via social media,” Salameh, who came to this job from Merrill Lynch, told me. “I have read various so-called biographies of myself, and am discovering I did not know who I was before.” He smiled a wan smile. “My contribution over the years has been to try to hold Lebanon stable.”

It’s not easy, he said, when you have a tiny dollarized economy, where 73.5 percent of deposits are in foreign currency, budget deficits are high, and protecting the currency is a daily battle.

“I don’t know if the government is very corrupt,” he continued, “but I can say I worked very hard to put in place a special investigation commission to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and I never compromised on this. Those who suffered from my decisions are now trying to drag me down with accusations of corruption.”

The Central Bank, he insisted, had no control over the private bank accounts of government members. “The Central Bank does not handle private accounts. I do not have this privilege. The banks should know their clients and report to us if they see something suspicious.”

As for the supposedly lavish wedding in France, the focus of much ire, Salameh said it took place overseas because his son, a Christian, wed a Muslim and it was easier to have a civil marriage in France. “It was just a normal dinner,” he said.

Salameh was clearly worried. He said he had no idea how the confrontation would end. Small and medium-size enterprises make up most of the Lebanese economy, and for now they have no income, with the country paralyzed. “The solution is not a violent one,” he told me. “You need to regenerate confidence.”

I asked if he would quit. “If it serves the country, but I think it may have the opposite effect, in terms of the confidence of markets.” He paused. “Look, if I am the problem, you can consider it solved. But mobilizing by identifying capital and money as the enemy is not the way forward. We need to build the state and build an economy that has growth.”