Syrian regime hints at stripping tycoon Rami Makhlouf's Syriatel of telecom licence

The company, controlled by Bashar Al Assad's cousin, is a cash cow

Syria's top tycoon publicly airing his grievances has revealed a power struggle within the ruling family as it tries to cement its position after nine years of war. AFP

Syrian authorities said they will take measures to “restore balance” to a telecom licence awarded two decades ago to President Bashar Al Assad’s cousin after a deadline passed for him to pay hundreds of millions in dues from his company that acts as a main cash source for the regime.

The announcement indicates Rami Makhlouf, Mr Al Assad’s maternal cousin, could be stripped of control of Syriatel, the country’s largest private company and one of few private businesses in Syria taking in profit.

The Syrian telecom authority said on Sunday that Syriatel had refused to pay “legally due amounts regarding restoring balance to the license granted to it”.

“Syriatel bears all the legal and operational consequences from its decision to reject to return all the rights it owes to the state,” it said.

Mr Makhlouf, Mr Al Assad's maternal cousin, said on Sunday that he had agreed to pay past taxes that the authorities had demanded and which he called unjust.

He made public on Facebook on May 10 a letter from Syriatel to the government saying the company is ready to pay immediately "a first instalment to be determined on the basis of the liquidity available to the company".

The authorities say Syriatel owes 234 billion Syrian pounds, equivalent to US$4.7 billion before the Syrian pound started collapsing in 2011.

But Syriatel is being extorted to pay new levies from its revenue stream which would result in the company going out of business, Mr Makhlouf said.

He said that he refused demands from people he did not name over the last few weeks to resign as chief executive officer of Syriatel under threat that Syriatel’s telecom licence would be withdrawn.

It is the latest development in a rift at the centre of power in Syria that has been playing out publicly in a country ruled by iron fist since Hafez Al Assad took power in 1970. Mr Makhlouf is the first senior figure from within the regime to criticise it openly since Hafez Al Assad's brother Rifaat mounted a failed coup in the 1980s.
Until recently the 50-year-old Mr Makhlouf was one of the three most powerful men in Syria as a member of a triumvirate comprising Mr Al Assad and his brother Maher Al Assad, head of the elite Fourth Mechanised Division in the country.

Security forces arrested and beat up two prominent Syrian dissidents who objected to granting the telecom concession to Mr Makhlouf in the early 2000s, saying it amounted to a de facto monopoly.

Riad Seif, an industrialist whom the regime had stripped his assets, was jailed for five years, while Aref Dalila, former dean of economics at Damascus University was incarcerated for seven years.

The two men were released in the second half of the 2000s but Mr Seif was later jailed for another three years, again for his criticism of the regime and its symbols.

In a series of videos over the past month, Mr Makhlouf decried the "injustice" he said is being dealt to him by the same Alawite-dominated security apparatus.

The same security actors had silenced his critics and killed thousands of civilians in the crackdown of the 2011 revolt against Assad family rule.

He said security outfits he bankrolled have been exerting pressure on him in an unprecedented and inhuman fashion.