A data leak from a Swiss bank reveals: Khaddam and Makhlouf collected a huge fortune

Over the years when his “Credit Suisse” account was open, former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam managed, according to what was revealed by the South African “Times Live” website, to collect tens of millions of dollars, from cash and shares of companies and luxury palaces, which are an amazing fortune for a public servant.

Details of the "Credit Suisse" account, which Khaddam jointly owned with his wife and three children, confirm that the family had already collected a great fortune when Khaddam was in office. The account was opened in 1994, and reached its highest balance of nearly 90 million Swiss francs in September 2003.

Khaddam died in 2020. His sons did not respond to phone calls or repeated requests by email and text messages about the reality of this wealth. Credit Suisse also did not comment on the Khaddam family's account, but said it complies with relevant policies and regulations.

Khaddam held high-level government positions in Syria from 1970 to 2005, first as foreign minister, and then as vice president under Hafez al-Assad. He rose to prominence in the 1980s during the civil war in neighboring Lebanon.

In a briefing with reporters, officials said Khaddam took about $500 million from Hariri over two decades, some in the form of homes, yachts, and money in French, Lebanese and Swiss bank accounts. Syrian media also reported that Khaddam received bribes in the 1980s to allow France and Germany to bury radioactive waste in the Syrian desert.

The former Syrian vice president was just one of many Arab elites who used Switzerland to store their wealth. For years, the financial secrecy of Switzerland's banks, and their relative stability, made it a popular destination for both legal and illegal money.

 “The perception that it was a safe haven to hide wealth in a way that offered high levels of confidentiality made it an attractive destination for many individuals,” Jackson Oldfield, a researcher at the civil forum for the asset recovery advocacy group, told OCCRP.

Among the other 30,000 clients of the Swiss bank whose data was leaked was Syrian Mohammad Makhlouf, the brother-in-law of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who served as a front for his son-in-law for years while leveraging his political connections to build his business empire that included tobacco, real estate, banking and oil.

Mohammad Makhlouf died in 2020. The Organization for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption (OCCRP), the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, sent messages to Muhammad Makhlouf's son, Rami, through his accounts on virtual media, but he did not receive any response.

The leak of Swiss bank bank data reveals how figures linked to regimes in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan and other places hid hundreds of millions in Credit Suisse before and after the so-called Arab Spring.

The leaked data indicates that Credit Suisse played an important role for years in helping prominent figures hide their fortunes, even as they and their governments were accused of compromising an entire region through bribery, embezzlement and nepotism, during the Arab Spring protests.

Assets linked to Arab officials were frozen in the months and years following the Arab Spring uprising. But full accountability for funds stashed abroad has remained elusive, particularly in jurisdictions where secrecy prevails.

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ANHA