Assad’s uncle used British adviser to manage funds looted from Syria, investigation reveals

The uncle of former Syrian dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, used a British advisor to secretly manage his vast wealth derived from funds looted from Syria, an investigation has revealed.

According to a joint investigation, the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Rifaat Al-Assad has been identified as a client of a British consultant who was fined by regulators earlier this year.

40-year-old Ginette Louise Blondel, from the English Channel island of Guernsey, was initially employed as a personal assistant for the son of Rifaat, then as a consultant, before moving on to manage a trust structure on behalf of his family, according to a notice by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission.

That notice, issued back in March this year, fined Blondel £210,000 ($264,000) and banned her from working as a director for nine years, after it discovered that Rifaat was her client.

With the Commission describing the former Syrian dictator’s uncle as “an alleged war criminal and kleptocrat” who had been “convicted of money laundering and aggravated tax fraud in a European court and sentenced to four years in prison” back in June 2020, it reportedly discovered that Blondel helped him in managing vast sums of money he had allegedly looted from Syria to power his European property empire worth hundreds of millions of Euros.

One example cited in the investigation was the discovery that Blondel had used her personal bank account to distribute €1 million to third parties on his behalf. She then allegedly used the funds to conduct over 150 payments to third parties on his behalf, with the regulator stating that it “considers these payments led to a very real risk that Ms Blondel may have been used to launder the proceeds of crime, a risk which Ms Blondel has consistently failed to recognise”.

Despite those findings, as well as earlier investigations into Blondel’s dealings with Rifaat, the Guernsey regulator has not brought criminal charges against her, and she is seemingly facing no further sanctions.

“If countries like the UK and its crown dependencies … are only prepared to use regulatory measures such as fines and disqualification, they cannot hope to fully deter dirty money washing through their financial systems,” said Susan Hawley, the Executive Director of Spotlight on Corruption.

READ: Swiss court to dismiss war crimes lawsuit against Rifaat Al-Assad