Paris and Damascus are discussing transferring €32 million ($37 million) to Syria after assets belonging to former vice president Rifaat Al Assad were confiscated in France, The National can reveal.
“The idea is that the money stolen by a corrupt regime should return to the people it stole from,” a French diplomatic source told The National. “These funds will finance development projects agreed with the Syrian authorities with direct impacts for the Syrian population.”
Talks started this week with the visit of a Syrian delegation to Paris led by Deputy Justice Minister Mustafa Al Qasim and Attorney General Hassan Youssef Al Turbah. Officials hope an agreement between the two states can be finalised by the end of the year.
“The French government says they want to return confiscated funds to Syria to benefit the reconstruction of country or at least basic infrastructure,” Mr Al Qasim told The National on the sideline of the talks.
Rifaat Al Assad was sentenced to jail in France in 2022 for embezzling Syrian state funds and using them to build a property empire across Europe.
His assets in the country have been estimated as worth €90 million ($106 million) and he also owned property in the UK and Spain. He died in January, aged 88.
The transfer would be a historic first and send a strong signal of support for accountability in Syria. “It's the first time that funds looted by the former authorities would be returned to the Syrian state,” said lawyer Mohammad Al Abdallah, director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, which organised the meetings.
“It is a very important opportunity for us to establish the solid foundations for such a process,” Mr Al Abdallah added.
Legal precedent
France is one of the few countries that has a legal framework allowing the restitution of funds from the sale of ill-gotten gains seized by the state. A 2021 law specifies that the funds must be used for development and benefit local populations. It has so far never been applied.
The French Justice Ministry has so far supervised the sale of his assets confiscated by court order worth €47 million, a representative told The National. They declined to give further details on individual sales, citing confidentiality. Their figure exceeds the €32 million currently under discussion because all the proceeds from the sales have not yet been transferred to the state budget. More sales are expected.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani suggested during a previous meeting with French counterparts that the funds could be used to finance transitional justice or agricultural projects, French sources said. The country is suffering from a drought and shortages of wheat. A final decision has yet to be reached.
“There does not need to be a competition between justice and basic needs,” Mr Al Abdallah said. “It should all happen in parallel.”
Funds plundered
Impoverished Syria is struggling with only basic infrastructure services and soaring inflation after a 13-year civil war. Bringing justice for victims of the civil war is viewed as an important means of building confidence in the new authorities that toppled the Assad regime in December 2024.
Rifaat Al Assad was the uncle of ousted president Bashar Al Assad and the brother of his predecessor, the late Hafez Al Assad.
He was considered one of the most violent figures in the country’s modern history. In March 2024, Swiss prosecutors charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in massacres in the city of Hama in 1982.
After a failed coup in 1984, Hafez Al Assad paid him a large settlement to leave the country. The total sum is believed to have reached hundreds of millions of dollars, in part taken directly from the central bank, that helped him later invest in property in Europe, Mr Al Qasim said.
“He made a lot of profit from money belonging to the Syrian people, and courts in Spain and France have since established he was guilty of tax evasion and money laundering,” Mr Al Qasim said.
In France, Rifaat Al Assad's home was on the prestigious Avenue Foch in Paris. He also owned a 45-hectare stud farm with a chateau outside the capital and 33 flats in the city's Avenue du President Kennedy in the name of a Panamanian-registered property company with accounts at a Danish bank in Gibraltar.
Technical support
But his assets were not the sole focus of the meetings held this week by Syrian officials, who spent three days in France for workshops that ended on Saturday. Talks included closed-door sessions with the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office and the National Gendarmerie's Criminal Research Institute.
Syrian officials sought to bridge gaps in their legal system for prosecuting war crimes. They also discussed technical co-operation to unearth mass graves, scheduled to start next year.
“The amount of money being promised to be returned to Syria, truly, is not worth as much as what was stolen,” Mr Al Qasim said. “We are focusing on applying justice and building co-operation with French authorities, particularly when it comes to transitional justice and the disappeared.”
Syria's Attorney General, Mr Al Turbah, said his country needed technical support and training for judges and criminal investigators. “Until now we have no judicial co-operation with any state. Some countries have promised help, as well as international organisations and the UN, but there is nothing yet,” he said.
It has been described as the first such visit by a Syrian delegation to a third country. Syria's legal framework has been heavily influenced by France, which administered the country from 1920 until its independence in 1946.
“Why not transfer that knowledge?” Mr Al Abdallah asked. “The problem in Syria is that the government is not sure where to start from. There is so much to do. The country has been destroyed by poverty and war criminals.”
Both the Assad regime and rebel groups have been accused of atrocities during the civil war. A vast majority of the half a million deaths are believed to have been caused by government forces and their allies.
