The troubled relationship between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his cousin Rami Makhlouf, who is known as "the treasurer of the regime" in its details, is similar to a dramatic series that appears in betrayals and the struggle for power and money and its interior desperate attempts from the head of the regime to "clean up" the narrow circle of government.
A prolonged investigation by the French newspaper Le Monde in Beirut Benjamin Barth highlighted this volatile relationship, which was characterized by its friendliness and intersectionality of interests economically and politically, before it turned into a "fierce" conflict in which all kinds of weapons and maneuvering methods were allowed to be used.
13 years after Assad was elected to a second term in the year 2007 following a propaganda campaign in which he participated strongly and funded by Rami Makhlouf, to show him a "contemporary" and "controlling" president, unlike his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria with blood and fire, and the "time of friendliness" between "my childhood friend" has ended .
The Assad government, which had been devastated by 9 years of war and has been silenced by international sanctions, seized the telecommunications company "Syriatel", owned by Makhlouf, for allegedly defaulting on tax dues.
The assets of Rami Makhlouf, 50, were also frozen, and some of his senior officials and men were arrested inside Syria, in a clear indication of an effort by the regime to marginalize it and exclude it from the scene, according to the newspaper.
Makhlouf's response
But Rami Makhlouf did not wait long to respond, posting a series of videos on his Facebook account, during which he criticized the accusations of tax evasion directed against him and the "arbitrary" security services.
They are all grievances "laughable" - according to Le Monde - by this man who sponsored and financed the suppression of the Syrian people's revolution in 2001, and through his videos he tried to present himself as a "philanthropist" Alawite sect that rules the country, in an implicit challenge to Bashar al-Assad.
Ayman Abdel-Nour, a Syrian dissident and former adviser to Bashar al-Assad, asserts that "if someone other than Rami Makhlouf had been eliminated at the time, this daring is due to the fact that the man has a distinguished family name protecting him, and he has a lot of money hidden in accounts and fake companies abroad."
"These matters are the guarantee of his life, and if he is now disposed of, all of his assets will be transferred to his wife and children abroad ... Rami is wounded, but he is not yet dead," added Abdel-Nour, who lived closely with both men.
Beginning of the story
The roots of the relationship between President Bashar al-Assad and his cousin Rami Makhlouf are rooted in the relationship of their parents, Hafez al-Assad and Muhammad Makhlouf, who have been collected by politics and a link of interests since Assad came to power following the coup of the Baath Arab Socialist Party in 1970.
Ayman Abdel Nour believes that "the Makhlouf family always viewed themselves as partners of the Assad family in power. The system was not only for the Assad family, but their system was also them."
When Bashar succeeded his father in 2000, he preserved the legacy and nature of the relationship between the two families, where he "gifted" Rami Makhlouf the management of Syriatel Communications Company, and was then a pioneer in a new and promising market.
The "Syria Report" economic website revealed that the Syriatel contract was signed after a tender offer that lasted for only two weeks in the summer period, in order to avoid the emergence of any serious competitor, so that the company would turn into a symbol of the "friend capitalism" sponsored by the president, a capital that is different from that sponsored by his father With Al Makhlouf in form, but it is similar to her content.
Relationship changed
In early 2001, Bashar Al-Asad entered into marriage with Asma Al-Akhras, the daughter of a Sunni heart surgeon from Homs and settled in Britain, whom he learned while studying ophthalmology in London.
Thanks to her image as a "modern" woman and her experience in the field of financial analysis, the names attracted the attention of the media, but her appearance on the Syrian scene was not welcomed by Makhlouf's family who wished at one time that the successor of Hafez Al-Assad would be associated with their daughter and Rami's sister, Kinda Makhlouf.
A Syrian consultant who worked closely with the president and his wife confirms that "Anisa (Bashar's mother) and Muhammad (Rami's father) were opposed to this marriage, but Bahjat Suleiman - the strong man in the Syrian Intelligence Service and close to Bashar - persuaded them to accept the matter, considering that it is a good opening step on The Sunni community "which forms the majority of Syrian society.
In 2006, Rami Makhlouf established, within the framework of the policy of developing the private sector, a giant holding company called "Sham", joined by about 70 entrepreneurs - all Syrians - as partners, including names, and the man’s logo at that point - as documented by "Syria" Report "in his report -" Join me and you share a pie, or stay away and you're not going to get anything. "
Around the same period, Asma al-Assad launched her own economic group under the name "Syria Holding", but the value and weight of the company are not comparable to the Rami group, as it included about 20 investors, all of them "second-class" men in the Syrian economy.
Al-Assad's wife also established a charity called "Syria Trust" (the Syrian Trust for Development), which is the first non-governmental organization in the country's history.
But Anisa and her daughter, Bushra (the mother and sister of Bashar Al-Kubra), worked hard to curb the ambitions of the president's wife, according to what Ayman Abdel Nour confirms, while Rami Makhlouf continued developing his projects, especially thanks to his relations at the top of the power pyramid, as his "economic empire" extended to new sectors. Including hydrocarbons, financial services, air transport and insurance.
Bashar Al-Assad did not look with satisfaction at this "gluttony in investment" that characterized Rami, as confirmed by an influential businessman in the Syrian capital.
"We have the money, we have the authority," he said, interrupting the words of one of the ministers who advised him one day to review his ambitions in anger, "I want the cake completely," according to what was stated in The book "Assad or Burn the Country" published in 2019 by Lebanese-American journalist Sam Dagher.
Layoffs and penalties
The problems for Rami Makhlouf actually began in the summer of 2019, when Syrian army soldiers surrounded the headquarters of his militia in Damascus, where all the people inside and were demobilized and integrated into the ranks of the regular forces.
In the same period, officials of the Al-Bustan Charitable Foundation, which Makhlouf founded in 2011, to help the families of the dead soldiers of the regime, especially from the Alawite sect, were expelled and replaced by others loyal to the authority.
A chapter in the financial sanctions ensued, as the assets of Aabar Petroleum - one of the pillars of Makhlouf's economic empire - were frozen in December 2019.
And in mid-April last, the Syrian government announced that it was claiming 233 billion Syrian pounds (about $ 180 million at the time) from Syriatel and MTN, the second company in the Syrian smartphone market as tax arrears, so that Rami Makhlouf, the new outcast "In the eye of the system - according to the newspaper - afterwards to publish his angry videos, which revealed the details of the case.
Provocation and revenge
According to Le Monde's investigation, the incident constituted "retaliation" from the "ambitious" names of al-Assad from Rami Makhlouf, and came only shortly after his two sons - Ali and Muhammad - published "provocative images of the names of al-Assad" documenting their lavish summer vacation aboard luxury cars in alleys. Monte Carlo and the Greek beaches of Mykonos.
In this context, Ayman Abdel Nour says, "Asmaa is thinking about her sons, she wants to secure their future in the long term .. She is no longer satisfied with the businessmen loyal to the regime, she wants to seize their assets (Al Makhlouf) and put her under her name and Bashar, as a bank employee A precedent believes that it is able to manage these assets. "
In turn, Bashar does not see any harm in reminding his cousin of the rules of the game, in his opinion, "Rami has always been a manager and not a partner, and this is the misunderstanding that caused the whole problem," according to what one of the Damascene businessmen close to the regime believes.
The president also does not see an embarrassment - according to the newspaper - in "putting his hand in the pocket" of a childhood friend, while the pockets of his regime are in urgent need of dollars to contain the continuous collapse of the Syrian pound and the collapse of the purchasing power of the population exhausted by years of war.
He must also "calm" his allies in Moscow and Tehran, who are waiting for the hottest people to receive compensation for the support they have provided him over the past nine years. Perhaps the publication of several articles criticizing Assad in the Russian media recently was understood by the ruling circles in Damascus as a reference to According to Le Monde, the ally of the Russian ally is running out.
Family judges
She adds that the absence of both Anisa and Mohamed Makhlouf in this crisis, which remains "family" despite everything - the two who have always played the role of "family judges" - had a clear impact on the course of events. Anisa died in 2016 in Damascus after she lived for a while in Dubai is accompanied by her daughter Bushra, while Muhammad Makhlouf is suffering from the disease in the Russian capital.
Joseph Bahout, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, believes that "the death of his mother and the departure of the other freed Bashar al-Assad from their guardianship, so the situation is now unbearable."
According to private information, Le Monde said in its investigation that contacts are still taking place between the two camps, through two prominent leaders of the Alawite sect - Ghassan Muhanna, Rami Makhlouf's uncle, and the former Syrian ambassador to Berlin, Suleiman Haddad - to defuse the crisis.
She considers that these endeavors will likely determine whether Rami Makhlouf will be able to stay inside Syria, or whether he will have to pack up his luggage and join his father in Moscow.
The newspaper asserts that the Assad regime may have been able to weather the "success" of the current crisis, which threatens it from the inside, and may even be a sign of a "strong return" to Bashar al-Assad.
She added - quoting the researcher Joseph Bahout - that "Bashar actually managed - as was his father Hafez Al-Assad's habit - to clean up the narrow circle surrounding him ... only two years ago he could never dispense with Rami but now he did, and this is proof of health."