Syria: Where is Bashar Assad's money?

Nobody really knows how much money fallen Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his family have. The closest and likely most factual estimate was provided by the US State Department in a 2022 report to Congress. This suggested the personal wealth of Assad and his wife, Asma, was likely somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion (€950 million and €1.5 billion).

The Assad family owns real estate in Dubai, Moscow and London and has dozens of secret bank accounts.

For example, British media have reportedthat when the Syrian civil war broke out, authorities in the UK froze an Assad account containing 40 million pounds ($50 million, €48 million) at a London branch of the international bank HSBC.

The estimated $1 billion in personal wealth is likely just a small part of the Assad family riches. Other more speculative estimates suggest the clan also has 200 tons of gold, and assets worth around $22 billion. Some commentators have even suggested the Assad's hidden network of assets could be worth as much as $122 billion, after everything is added up.

This is despite that fact that experts say Assad cultivated a "man-of-the-people persona" and locals told the Washington Post, that the family drove ordinary cars and attended ordinary schools.

Information about money and assets seized by authorities and court cases involving family members like Assad's cousins, the Makhloufs, are further indications of just how much money the dictator and his cronies extorted from the Syrian economy.

For example, until he fell out with the regime, Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf is thought to have been Syria's wealthiest man after Bashar Assad himself. He was estimated to be worth between $5 billion and $10 billion.

Another Makhlouf cousin, Hafez, had a bank account containing around $3.2 million frozen by Swiss authorities in 2016, because of suspicions of money laundering.

And in 2017, Spanish and French authorities seized around €600 million worth of property belonging to Assad's uncle, Rifaat Assad. This included hotels, restaurants and other real estate.

How did the Assads make their money?

"The Assads are directly or indirectly involved in almost all large-scale economic operations in the country," the 2022 US State Department report explained.

They are also engaged in drug trafficking, arms smuggling and extortion, and they run the proceeds of those activities though "seemingly legitimate corporate structures and non-profit entities," the report noted.

"Due to his [Assad's] undisputed sway over the public sector as the head of state, he has unchecked power to steer and direct state business toward firms he controls through his business fronts," Syrian political economist Karam Shaar and political scientist Steven Heydemann explained in a 2024 paper for the Brookings Institute.

One example they gave outlined the way in which a company run by two of Assad's cronies was handed the government contract to maintain and renovate Syria's two largest power plants. These were "reportedly being considered for an exemption from Western sanctions so they can be refurbished."

In recent years, Assad had been consolidating his control over income sources, Shaar and Heydemann continued, with the dictator himself apparently trying to corral the wealth of allies and family members for himself.

That included his 2020 fight with billionaire cousin Rami Makhlouf, the experts explained. Makhlouf was sidelined, allegedly placed under house arrest, while Assad took over his empire.

More recently, the Assad regime was also known to have been behind the increased production and trade of the addictive methamphetamine, Captagon.

What happened to the Assads' money?

It's clear that Bashar Assad left Syria in a hurry, without — according to interviews by news agency Reuters — even telling some his closest aides or family he was going. His wife, who is being treated for cancer, was already in Russia with their three children.

Reports of a hasty exit and then videos filmed by Syrians who entered Assad homes and offices later indicate the family left a lot behind, including fancy furniture, designer goods and a garage filled with luxury cars — including a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce.

But they won't be empty handed in Russia.

"There will be a hunt for the regime's assets internationally," Andrew Tabler, a former White House official who previously worked to identify Assad family assets, told the Wall Street Journal this week. "They had a lot of time before the revolution to wash their money. They always had a Plan B and are now well equipped for exile."

This week, British newspaper, the Financial Times reported that between 2018 and 2019 the Syrian Central Bank flew $250 million worth of cash to Vnukovo airport, southwest of Moscow.

"The unusual transfers from Damascus underscore how Russia, a crucial ally to Assad that lent him military support to prolong his regime, became one of the most important destinations for Syria's cash as western sanctions pushed it out of the financial system," the newspaper wrote.

The Financial Times also previously reported on the fact that the Assads owned at least 18 luxury apartments in Moscow. Extended family were purchasing further assets in Russia between 2018 and 2019, too, it said.

What happens now?

Even if the Assads had only a fraction of the wealth attributed to them by various organizations, the numbers still compare horribly with the economic situation ordinary Syrians find themselves in.

Since the start of the civil war, Syria's national income, or gross domestic product (GDP), has plummeted to an estimated $9 billion and looks set to contract further in 2024, according to latest calculations by the World Bank. "As of 2022, poverty affects 69% of the population — equivalent to about 14.5 million Syrians," World Bank researchers noted.  

As a result, there have been calls from some Syrian rights organizations for the Assad's wealth be found and returned. For example, the 40 million British pounds — which, thanks to interest, has grown to 55 million pounds — in that frozen HSBC account in London.

Edited by: Jon Shelton