Rifat al-Assad, uncle of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, faces a request of the public prosecutor of eight years of prison and fine of 2.7 million euros as head of a corporate society designed to launder nearly 700 million in Spain of euros of illicit origin, good part usurped Syrian Treasury, with the buying real estate on the Costa del Sol (Malaga). The National Court will judge him from this Tuesday.
for these facts Eight other relatives are also charged. (mostly his children) and figureheads for which the Prosecutor’s Office requests six years in prison and 2.1 million euros. Also claim the confiscation of “all” personal property and estate and of the shares in all the companies involved in the laundering operations.
The National Court plans judge all of them from Monday, although the eighty-year-old Rifat Al Assad has asked the Criminal Chamber that due to his advanced age he cannot travel to the trial, so it is not ruled out that finally it will have to lay off, Sources from this court have informed ‘Efe’.
Another conviction in France
Al Assad already has a sentence of four years in prison in France also for Whitening by means of the purchase of properties valued at a total of 90 million euros
According to the provisional conclusions of the prosecutor, the main defendant was in lto “top” of an organization dedicated to money laundering through ” corporate instruments and hundreds of cascading companies managed by the family”, an activity that lasted until its “blocking”, both in Spain as in other European countries.
the ‘background’
In 1983, the then president of Syria and defendant’s brother, Hafed, suffered a serious illness, but did not consider Rifat, who was vice president, to be part of the committee that was to govern Syriaso this, “supported by military force at your command”, he tried to seize power and displace his brother, without success.
Once Hafed was restored, forced him to go into exile although in exchange he gave him almost 300 million euros for his maintenance and that of his family “from the budget of the Syrian presidency.”
In addition to the amounts “illicitly looted from the Syrian treasury”, in the 1970s, it is estimated that Rifat also obtained huge illicit resources of multiple criminal activities such as extortion, threats, smuggling, looting of archaeological wealth, usurpation of real estate and drug trafficking.
The total amount of money of illicit origin, from various sources, has been estimated by the Syrian opposition at around 4,000 million dollars of the time, and “there is no record of the manner in which the defendant placed said amounts outside the Syrian State.”
first acquisitions
The first acquisitions of the Assads in Spain date back to 1986, with the purchase of 244 parking spaces through a Gibraltarian company, and thus he invested in real estate and businesses in the province of Malaga, especially in strategic points of the Costa del Sol. In the town of Benahavis acquired a farm 33 million meters squares.
It is estimated that the 507 properties acquired in our country between 1986 and 2005, They currently have a value of about 700 million euros.
The defendant, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, is the final beneficiary of two ‘trusts’ based in the tax haven of the Bahamas islands, called the Granada Trust and the Alhambra Trust, and which would be “the head of a pyramid structure of companies whose sole purpose is to hide the real ownership of a whole series of goods purchased with money illegally obtained in Syria”. He also had 32 Panamanian companies “to manage and hide his fortune.”
In addition to acquiring multiple properties in the Costa del Sol, Rifat took over the operation of businesses such as Hotel Park Plaza Suites, in Benabola, or the Plaza Beach Banus, as well as restaurants and parking lots.
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The Prosecutor’s Office also accuses him of using money of illicit origin to acquire three armored Toyota Land Cruisers, as well as watches, jewelry, metals, carpets and ivories worth 271,878 euros.
It is also attributed heritage in Gibraltar, Switzerland, Panama, Jersey or Guernsey, and in the United Kingdom has, among other properties, the largest private residence after Buckingham Palace.