They seek the hidden fortune that Bashar al Assad’s family accumulated during 50 years in power

After the fall of the Assad dictatorship, which held the destinies of Syria in its grip for half a century, several governments and experts from NGOs linked to human rights accelerate global search for billions of dollars in cash and assets hidden by the dynasty.

Finding that hidden wealth will be difficult. The United States mounted a long campaign of sanctions against the Syrian regime, forcing it to invest outside the West and through tax havens.

Human rights lawyers hope to track and recover assets for the Syrian people. “There will be an international search for the regime’s assets,” he told the newspaper The Wall Street Journal Andrew Tabler, a former White House official who identified Assad family assets from recent White House sanctions. “They had a lot of time before their collapse to launder their money. “They had a plan B and are well equipped for exile.”

The exact size of the dynasty’s wealth is not known, nor is it known which member controls which assets. A State Department report in 2022, cited by the Journal, said it was difficult to determine a figure, but it is estimated that companies and assets related to the Assads They could be worth up to $12 billion.

The search will be long, considering the years-long attempts to recover wealth hidden abroad by the dictators of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. The Assad family has built a vast network of investments and business interests over the decades since the patriarch, Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970.

Among international purchases made over the years by close relatives of his son, deposed leader Bashar al-Assad, there are prime real estate properties in Russia, Viennese boutique hotels and a private jet located in Dubai, according to former US officials, lawyers and research organizations that have investigated the fortunes of the former ruling clan.

The clan began amassing a fortune shortly after Hafez took control of Syria following a bloodless coup. Hafez put his brother-in-law Mohammad Makhlouf, then a lowly airline employee, in charge of the country’s lucrative tobacco import monopoly, said Ayman Abdel Nour, a university friend of Bashar al-Assad.

Makhlouf received large commissions in the construction sector, said Abdel Nour, who was also an unpaid adviser to Bashar. When Bashar succeeded his father as leader in 2000, Makhlouf passed the business empire on to his own son, Rami. “The Makhlouf are the Assad’s henchmen”Bourdon told the Journal.

Rami Makhlouf later became the regime’s main financier with assets in banks, media, duty-free shops, airlines and telecommunications, eventually owning a fortune of up to 10 billion dollarsaccording to the State Department. The US government sanctioned Makhlouf in 2008 for profiting from public corruption by Syrian regime officials.

Bashar al Assad fled Syria for Russia on Dec. 8 as opposition rebels advanced rapidly toward the capital, ending his 24-year dictatorship, which followed nearly three decades of rule by his father.

As officials and experts tracking the money agree, the Assads’ illegal wealth was often obtained through state monopolies and drug trafficking, especially the amphetamine Captagon, and was partly reinvested in jurisdictions beyond the reach of the law. international. The trade of this drug generated an annual average of US$ 2.4 billion between 2020 and 2022according to the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks, a research group that tracks its trade.

Many of the regime’s most powerful figures were business-minded, notably Bashar al-Assad’s British-born wife, Asma, a former JPMorgan banker. “The ruling family was as expert in criminal violence as in financial crimes,” said Toby Cadman, a London-based human rights lawyer at Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, who has investigated Assad’s assets. The wealth of the Assad clan continued to grow as ordinary Syrians struggled with the impact of the country’s civil war, which began in 2011. The World Bank estimated that in 2022 almost 70% of the population lived in poverty.

The legal teams have already managed to freeze some assets. In 2019, a Paris court frozen properties worth US$ 95 million that Rifaat al-Assad had in France Bashar’s uncle, obtained by laundering embezzled public funds. William Bourdon, the human rights lawyer who brought the case in Paris, said money in tax havens like Dubai and Russia would be much harder to recover.

The Assads amassed “wealth at the expense of the Syrian people through their control over an extensive illicit network with ties in Europe, the Gulf and elsewhere,” the State Department said. “We have a duty to recover the money for the Syrian people,” Bourdon said. Some took matters into their own hands. Syrians ransacked an Assad palace, taking furniture and works of art. And they recorded videos in a garage full of luxury cars, including Aston Martins, Ferraris and a Lamborghini