The Court of Cassation in Paris rejected, on Wednesday, the last legal endeavor available to Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and finally confirmed the four-year prison sentence issued once morest him in France in a case of “illegally” acquired real estate valued at ninety million euros.
Rifaat al-Assad, the 85-year-old former Syrian vice president, was convicted on appeal on 9 September 2021 of laundering Syrian public funds as part of an organized gang between 1996 and 2016. He was sentenced to four years in prison, the ruling of the first instance court.
The Paris Court of Appeal also indicted Rifaat al-Assad for aggravated tax fraud and the clandestine employment of people, and ordered the confiscation of all real estate it deemed he fraudulently acquired.
After complaints filed by Transparency International and the Sherpa Association, the French judiciary opened an investigation in 2014, during which two mansions and dozens of apartments were confiscated in luxury neighborhoods in the capital, offices and property in London.
After the Court of Cassation’s decision, Wednesday, the value of these properties that were permanently confiscated, will be returned to Syria as part of a new mechanism for returning assets fraudulently obtained by foreign leaders and approved by Parliament in 2021.
Rifaat al-Assad was the commander of the Defense Brigades, a security force that took charge of the bloody suppression of the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 in the city of Hama.
Pro-Syrian government media reported that Rifaat al-Assad returned to Syria in the fall of 2021 following more than three decades in exile.
In 1984, Rifaat al-Assad left Syria following the failed coup once morest his brother Hafez al-Assad, and headed to Switzerland and then to France. He did not have a personal fortune in Syria, but he managed to build a real estate empire in Europe, especially in Spain, as well as in France and Britain.
Rifaat al-Assad was awarded the Legion of Honor in France in 1986 for “services he has rendered.”
He is also being pursued by justice in Switzerland for war crimes committed in the 1980s.
This is the second case related to “unfair gains” being handled by the French judiciary following the case of Teodorin Obiang, the eldest son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, who was sentenced in July 2021 to a three-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 30 million euros.
There are other ongoing investigations targeting, in particular, the family of the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, or the family of the former Gabon president, Omar Bongo Ondimba, who was charged by the judiciary once morest nine of his children in the spring and in July.
