Today, Monday, in Paris, a trial begins that raised al-Assad, the uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in a case of illicit enrichment, on suspicion of having a "real estate empire" in France from Syrian public funds.

Earlier this year, the French judiciary ordered a trial that raised al-Assad for money laundering by building a real estate empire worth 90 million euros ($ 99.5 million) in France alone, and Bashar al-Assad's uncle has been under investigation in France since 2014.

Rifaat was one of the pillars of the former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s regime, as he commanded the “Defense Brigades”, which are special forces that played a major role in the devastating attack on the central Syrian city of Hama in 1982, and he was then called “the butcher of Damascus.”

The defense committee for Rifaat al-Assad, 82, told Agence France-Presse that Hafez al-Assad's younger brother will be absent from his trial session for "medical reasons". The trial is expected to continue until December 18, and Rifat faces two money-laundering charges in the context of an organized gang. For tax fraud and embezzlement of Syrian public funds between 1984 and 2016, the defendant rejects the two charges.

Lawsuit and investigations
Six years ago, the French anti-corruption association Sherpa filed a complaint against Rifaat al-Assad for possession of property with illicit funds and misappropriation of public funds, for the French judicial authorities to appoint a judge to investigate the file. With a value of 90 million euros in France, and six hundred million euros in Spain.

The judicial investigation showed that the uncle of the Syrian President acquired, through companies based on tax havens, major real estate in France in the early eighties, as he owned forty-two palaces in Paris, a horse farm near the French capital, and offices in Lyon and others.

Rifaat Al-Assad owns more than five hundred properties in Spain that were confiscated in 2017.

The accused says that he collected his wealth from donations from the Saudi royal family amounting to more than one million dollars per month, and his lawyers presented documents proving that he received donations of up to 25 million dollars between 1984 and 2010, but the investigators recorded the presence of funds from Saudi Arabia worth only 10 million dollars in those Transfers.

It is noteworthy that Rifaat Al-Assad was forced to leave Syria in the year 1984 after he led a failed coup against his brother Hafez, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, and lived traveling between Britain and France.