An uncle of the just lately ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used an adviser in Guernsey to secretly handle his wealth, which included an unlimited European property empire price a whole lot of thousands and thousands of euros that prosecutors declare was acquired with funds looted from the wartorn state.
Rifaat al-Assad, often known as the “Butcher of Hama” for overseeing the violent suppression of a riot within the Eighties, has been accused of conflict crimes by Swiss prosecutors. In 2020, he was convicted by a French court docket of embezzling Syrian state funds and pouring the cash into luxurious properties, with the French state seizing belongings price €90m.
In a joint investigation, the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have now recognized him as a consumer of a Guernsey marketing consultant who was fined by regulators earlier this yr. Ginette Louise Blondel, 40, was banned from working as a director for 9 years and fined £210,000 by the Guernsey Monetary Providers Fee in March.
Initially employed as a private assistant for the son of her consumer, then as a marketing consultant, Blondel went on to handle a posh belief construction on the household’s behalf, in line with a discover revealed by the regulator. In a single occasion, her private checking account was used to distribute €1m to 3rd events on her consumer’s behalf.
The discover doesn’t identify Blondel’s employer, merely referring to them as “Shopper 1”. Nevertheless, particulars of the case, and proof gathered by worldwide prosecutors, point out that Shopper 1 was Rifaat al-Assad.
A brother of Hafiz al-Assad, who seized energy in Syria in a 1971 coup, Rifaat was the top of the Defence Brigades. His elite forces allegedly oversaw the bloodbath of an estimated 20,000 individuals within the city of Hama in 1982.
The Assad regime collapsed this month as insurgent teams rose up and seized management of the capital, Damascus, after greater than a decade of civil conflict. Assad relations have been granted asylum in Moscow. It’s unclear whether or not Rifaat, now 86, is amongst them. His European wealth stays in limbo, with freezing orders imposed within the UK, Spain and France, which means properties can’t be offered with out permission from the authorities.
The regulator’s case in opposition to Blondel is a window into the function performed by tax havens resembling Guernsey in enabling ultra-wealthy people – even these suspected of probably the most critical atrocities – to shelter and develop their wealth in Europe.
“Rifaat al-Assad’s crimes, notably the 1982 Hama bloodbath, are among the many gravest atrocities of our time,” stated Philip Grant, the chief director of Trial Worldwide, which filed the felony grievance in opposition to him in Switzerland.
Chanez Mensous, a lawyer on the NGO Sherpa, which initiated the French felony grievance in opposition to Rifaat, referred to as on European governments to repatriate cash raised from asset seizures to weak Syrians. “Restitution is crucial,” she stated.
London, Paris and Marbella
In 2013, two years into the Syrian civil conflict, Swiss prosecutors started investigating Rifaat’s alleged function within the Hama case. He was uniquely weak to prosecution, having been expelled from Syria in 1984 after staging a failed coup in opposition to his brother.
In exile he arrange house in France whereas growing an €800m actual property portfolio with places of work, villas, mansions and residences in London, Paris and Marbella. A 2019 judgment from one of many circumstances in opposition to him disclosed that greater than 500 properties belonging to Rifaat have been below asset freezes.
In response to Spanish prosecutors, the properties have been owned by corporations whose administrators included Rifaat’s frontpeople or quite a few relations – he was reported to have had 4 wives and 16 youngsters – however hardly ever by the person himself.
His property empire has included:
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The Witanhurst property in Highgate, north London – the second largest personal residence within the capital after Buckingham Palace. Rifaat offered it for £32m to builders in 2007 after leaving it in disrepair.
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A £50m mansion in South Avenue, Mayfair. Owned by means of a shell firm within the British Virgin Islands, it was frozen by British proceeds of crime prosecutors in 2017.
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A seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom property in Leatherhead, Surrey, with a fitness center, tennis court docket and indoor swimming pool. It was offered for £4m in 2016 earlier than prosecutors may impose an asset freeze.
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A seven-storey mansion on Avenue Foch, which results in the Arc de Triomphe in the most costly arrondissement of Paris. Artwork and furnishings from the property have been auctioned however the property itself stays frozen.
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Thirty-two residences in Paris’s Avenue du Président Kennedy, which runs alongside the financial institution of the Seine subsequent to the Eiffel Tower.
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La Máquina, a €60m property occupying nearly a 3rd of your entire Marbella resort city of Benahavís. La Máquina’s footprint is so expansive that the Assads have been reported to have thought-about reworking it into an enclave completely for rich Syrians.
Spanish prosecutors alleged that the supply of the funds used to purchase these properties was a mixture of $200m stolen from the Syrian state and disguised as bills, and a $100m mortgage from Libya. Rifaat and his associates have been accused of making the most of “large illicit assets from a number of felony actions: extortion, threats, smuggling, plundering of archaeological wealth, usurpation of actual property, [and] drug trafficking”.
Rifaat left France for Syria in 2021, shortly earlier than the French court docket of enchantment upheld his June 2020 conviction for cash laundering and aggravated tax fraud, for which he was sentenced to 4 years in jail. In March this yr, Swiss prosecutors charged him with conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.
Rifaat’s current whereabouts are unknown. Makes an attempt to achieve him for remark through the Syrian embassy in London have been unsuccessful. He has denied the French and Spanish cash laundering prices, claiming most of his fortune was given to him by the Saudi royal household.
Particulars within the discover of sanctions in opposition to Blondel, the Guernsey adviser, point out Rifaat was her consumer. He’s described as being “an alleged conflict felony and kleptocrat” who in June 2020 was “convicted of cash laundering and aggravated tax fraud in a European court docket and sentenced to 4 years in jail”.
Blondel was named, alongside different advisers and a number of banks, in a Spanish indictment paper in opposition to Rifaat. She was described as a consultant for certainly one of his household’s company automobiles. The current standing of the Spanish case isn’t clear and prosecutors didn’t reply to inquiries.
With a grasp’s in company governance and membership of the Chartered Governance Institute, the trade physique for firm secretaries, Blondel was a longtime determine in Guernsey’s offshore finance trade. The island within the Channel attracts in personal wealth from around the globe, managing corporations and trusts holding belongings price an estimated £300bn.
In January 2013, Blondel left her job at a belief administration agency, the place Shopper 1’s enterprise had dominated 99% of her time, and branched out on her personal, in line with the regulator. The consumer’s son employed her as a private assistant. A yr later, in March 2014, she signed up as a marketing consultant to advise on enterprise and administration, serving to handle Shopper 1’s monetary actions. She labored for them for seven years till 2020.
In response to the Guernsey regulator, the consumer – Rifaat – was first investigated for cash laundering in 2012, and Blondel knew this when she began working for him.
The regulator discovered she breached native legal guidelines by managing trusts, when solely regulated corporations can perform such work. She held 11 simultaneous directorships, in breach of a most cap of eight, and didn’t conduct formal cash laundering threat assessments.
In 2015, €1m of funds have been transferred into her private checking account, after an try and arrange a company construction fell by means of. Blondel then used the funds to make greater than 150 funds to 3rd events on her consumer’s behalf. “The fee considers these funds led to a really actual threat that Ms Blondel might have been used to launder the proceeds of crime, a threat which Ms Blondel has persistently didn’t recognise,” the regulator stated.
Blondel didn’t reply to an invite to remark.
No additional sanctions
Susan Hawley, the chief director of Highlight on Corruption, stated prosecutions in opposition to advisers have been important to function a deterrent.
“If nations just like the UK and its crown dependencies … are solely ready to make use of regulatory measures resembling fines and disqualification, they can not hope to completely deter soiled cash washing by means of their monetary techniques,” she stated.
Nevertheless, the Guernsey regulator doesn’t deliver felony prices, and Blondel seems to be dealing with no additional sanctions.
Subsequent yr, Guernsey’s capacity and willingness to fight cash laundering would be the topic of an evaluation by Moneyval, an arm of the Council of Europe. A earlier report in 2015 discovered the island’s variety of prosecutions and convictions to be “disproportionately low” contemplating the dimensions of its monetary companies sector.
A spokesperson for the states of Guernsey insisted the jurisdiction handled cash laundering offences extraordinarily significantly.
“On this particular case, the Guernsey Monetary Providers Fee – the native regulator – took critical motion in opposition to this particular person, handing down a really massive advantageous and a ban from working within the trade,” the spokesperson stated. “Nevertheless, as individuals working within the legislation enforcement sector are properly conscious, the evidential threshold for a felony prosecution and the brink for a regulator to take motion are very totally different.”
They continued: “As in all felony issues, for any profitable prosecution an alleged offence should be confirmed to the excessive felony customary. The place, following a full investigation, there’s inadequate proof to proceed, a case can be closed.”
A spokesperson for the Guernsey Monetary Providers Fee stated: “The Guernsey Monetary Providers Fee takes tackling monetary crime significantly.”
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