MADRID: Spain’s High Court said on Tuesday it has confiscated millions of euros worth of property owned by an uncle of Syrian president Bashar Assad and his associates as part of a probe into alleged money laundering.
The swoop comes less than a year after Rifaat Assad, an opponent of his nephew’s government, was put under investigation in France for tax fraud and money laundering.
Magistrate Jose de la Mata has ordered the confiscation of holiday homes, car parks, luxury apartments and rural estates in southern Spain worth 691 million euros ($736 million), the High Court said in a statement on its website.
Rifaat Assad’s lawyer in France was not immediately available to comment. He previously declined to comment about the French investigation.
French investigators, who suspect Rifaat Assad of acquiring his wealth in France illegally, discovered that he owned real estate in Spanish tourist resorts of Puerto Banus and Marbella.
Other European countries cooperated on the investigation, and legal proceedings started in Spain last December, following a report by the prosecutor’s office at the high court.
After being sent into exile from Syria in the 1980s, Rifaat Assad is suspected of using money from state coffers to start accumulating a property empire abroad, the court said.
Spanish authorities seized a total 503 properties including a more than 33 million square meter ranch with a market value of 60 million euros. They also froze dozens of bank accounts.
Some of the assets are registered to Rifaat Assad and companies linked to him, and some to his wives, children and daughters-in-law. The owner of one of the blocked accounts is a Spanish citizen who heads the company that manages most of the Assad family’s business abroad. (Reporting by Isla Binnie and Maria Vega Paul)
Spain swoop targets uncle of Syria’s Assad for alleged money laundering
Spain swoop targets uncle of Syria’s Assad for alleged money laundering
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
