Meriem Mahdhi

Dec 16, 2024 | theguardian.com | David Pegg |Ed Siddons |Rob Byrne |Meriem Mahdhi

An uncle of the recently ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used an adviser in Guernsey to secretly manage his wealth, which includeda vast European property empire worth hundreds of millions of euros that prosecutors claim wasacquired with funds looted from the wartorn state. Rifaat al-Assad, known as the “Butcher of Hama” for overseeing the violent suppression of a rebellion in the 1980s, has been accused of war crimes by Swiss prosecutors.