A Titan of Corruption and Slaughter Has Fallen

An aerial view shows people gathering to celebrate after performing the first Friday prayer following the fall of the 61-year-long Baath regime in Syria and the end of the Assad family’s rule in Latakia, Syria, on December 13, 2024. [Izettin Kasim/Anadolu via Getty Images]

"[Assad and his immediate family] lived, in a way, a normal life in front of people. His children went to normal schools. [The family drove regular cars and wore plain] jeans and a T-shirt out and about. My sister used to see his daughter in a club swimming pool, sitting with her friends."

"It was a surprise for us to see the garage full of cars because he never drove in fancy cars, or even his son. Believe it or not, the people around him were more of a show-off than himself." 

"If you asked me, 'How do you describe Bashar Assad', I would never talk about his lifestyle, because it didn't matter."

"What mattered is the secret police that he deployed, the different security departments he created."

Ammar Mahayni, retired businessman, neighbour near Assad family residence, Damascus 

"[This network -- of a patronage system --] serves as a tool for the  regime to access financial resources via seemingly legitimate corporate structures and non-profit entities."

"[The network's companies were able to] launder money from illicit activities and funnel funds to the regime."

"These networks penetrate all sectors of the Syrian economy."

U.S. State Department 2022 report to Congress

Islamists jihadists stand with the flag of the revolution on the burnt gravesite of Syria’s late president Hafez al-Assad at his mausoleum in the family’s ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province on December 11, 2024, after it was stormed by opposition factions. [AAREF WATAD/AFP via Getty Images]

 

Not for Bashar Assad the mega-yachts and grandiose palaces affected by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, though their brand of Islam was similar; he had no penchant for private jets handsomely appointed like Moammar Gadhafi of Libya; both extant, as will he too be, once Vladimir Putin begins to view his presence as that of an Albatross, when he finalizes his agreement with Assad's Islamist replacements in Syria. His reputation for leading a modest life, nonetheless was shattered as mobs of jubilant Syrians visited the Assad family property to eye and loot their contents.

A crowd of people are seen to rush up and down the stairs carrying Vuitton bags, Dior bags, boxes of designer items from Hermes and Cartier while others smashed furniture and portraits. In another video on Instagram, an expansive array of luxury cars is seen in the garage of the presidential palace compound where Aston Martins, Cadillacs, Lamborghinis and Ferraris were videoed. Neighbour Mahayni while disapproving of the looting, could commiserate: "They were poor. He took everything. We had the right to take it."

 

A complex patronage system backgrounded the Assad family; shell companies and facades. In 2022 the U.S. State Department estimated the net worth of the Assad family at between $1 and $2 billion; the imprecision of the estimate reflecting the spread and concealment of the family's wealth across real estate portfolios, corporations, accounts and tax havens under various names of obscure ownership. The entire country's GDP at the same time in 2021 was $9 billion. Some three in four people lived in dire straits requiring humanitarian aid. Over half the population struggled with food insecurity.

 

Cars, art and Louis Vuitton: what people found at Assad's presidential palace – video

"Bashar Assad is not known for flaunting his luxury lifestyle. He is known, nonetheless, for extorting the business community, known for being exceptionally corrupt."

"One can argue that the only constant in Bashar Assad's rule has been corruption."

Karam Shaar, political economist, non-resident senior fellow, New Lines Institute