The former vice-president of Syria, 85 years old and who lived in exile from 1984 to 2021, had been found guilty on the appeal of laundering in organized gang of embezzlement of Syrian public funds, between 1996 and 2016 .
Le Monde with AFP
The Court of Cassation rejected, Wednesday, September 7, the appeal of Rifaat al-Assad, uncle of the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, making final his conviction to four years in prison in France for poorly acquired goods. The former vice-president of Syria, 85, had been sentenced on appeal to Paris on September 9, 2021, to the same penalty as in the first instance, the Court also confirming the confiscation of a heritage evaluated at 90 million euros.
The younger brother of the former Syrian president (1971-2000) Hafez al-Assad was found guilty of laundering in organized gang of Syrian public funds and money laundering aggravated tax fraud between 1996 and 2016. been sentenced to the hidden work of house employees.
In this instruction initiated in 2014 after complaints from NGOs Sherpa and Transparency International, two mansions, dozens of apartments in the opulent neighborhoods of the capital, an area with castle and stud farms, offices and property in London were notably seized. After the decision of the Court of Cassation on Wednesday, the value of these goods, definitively confiscated, should be returned to Syria within the framework of the new mechanism for the restitution of assets fraudulently acquired by foreign leaders, adopted by Parliament in 2021.
old pillar of the Damascus regime
Former pillar of the Damascus regime, Rifaat al-Assad was the head of the Elite Forces of Internal Security, the defense brigades, who notably repressed in the blood an Islamist insurrection in 1982 in the city of Hama . It earned him a nickname, “the butcher of Hama”.
In 1984, he left Syria after a missed coup against his brother Hafez al-Assad, joining Switzerland and France. In the fall of 2021, the octogenarian returned to Syria after more than three decades of exile, announced a progressive media.
Decorated with the Legion of Honor in France in 1986 for “rendered services”, Rifaat al-Assad is threatened with a trial in Spain for much larger suspicions of poorly acquired goods concerning some 500 properties. He was also continued in Switzerland for war crimes committed in the 1980s.
This is the second case of poorly acquired property tried in France, after that of Teodorin Obiang, the eldest son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, definitively sentenced in July 2021 to three years in suspended prison and 30 million euros fine. Other surveys are underway, notably targeting the family of former president of Yemen Ali Abdallah Saleh or that of former Gabonese leader Omar Bongo, nine children were indicted in the spring and July.