Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad has a personal fund worth more than £55m deposited in an HSBC bank account in London, The i Paper can reveal.
According to banking sources, this account is part of £163m that Assad, his family and allies of his brutal regime have buried in UK accounts.
The disclosure has led to demands by leading political figures and human rights groups that the Government seize the tens of millions of pounds deposited in UK bank accounts by Assad and his network.
Assad fled to Moscow after rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took control of Syria’s capital Damascus last weekend.
After the Assad regime violently suppressed anti-government protests in 2011, the dictator and his associates were placed under Europe-wide sanctions and their assets were frozen.
Court documents from 2011 said that Assad held around £40m in an HSBC account in London. Despite the cash being frozen under UK sanctions against his regime and the former dictator not being able to gain access to this money, it has continued to accrue interest and is now worth in excess of £55m.
Ministers need to act
As well as freezing the £163m in assets, the Government has also collected £150,000 in fines for British firms that have breached its Syria sanctions regime.
There are now calls for ministers to use powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to take full control of the money and hand it back to Syria once a new and internationally accepted government is established.
The former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “After more than a decade of conflict in Syria, it is high time that the UK Government takes decisive action to support victims of the Syrian conflict and the Assad regime.
He added: “Since 2011, the Government has reportedly frozen over £163m in assets belonging to Syrian individuals and entities under the Syria sanctions regime … Yet, shamefully, not a single penny of these funds has been directed towards helping Syrian victims.”
The Tories’ shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel has also called for ministers to act.
She said: “Assad and his cronies should not be able to benefit from these gains while living in exile in Russia.
“The Government must use the full range of powers available to review the assets held in UK and repurpose them for the good of the Syrian people.”
The Government has also frozen the assets of Assad’s uncle, Rifaat al-Assad, among them a six-storey Mayfair townhouse estimated to be worth at least £26m.
Rifaat al-Assad has been known as the “Butcher of Hama” after ordering an indiscriminate shelling of the Syrian city in 1982, killing thousands of people in a bid to quell an uprising against his brother and then President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, who was Bashar’s father.
The money held in the UK by Assad and his family is just a small portion of the vast wealth he is believed to have amassed during a rule by a Syrian regime estimated to have killed around 500,000 people.
Assad is understood to control around £12.5bn in assets, including 200 tonnes of gold, houses around the world and a network of businesses spanning the Middle East and beyond.
Justice must be done
Razan Rashidi, executive director at the international human rights group the Syria Campaign, has demanded ministers return the cash to the Syrian people.
She said: “The millions in UK banks belongs to the Syrian people and has been hoarded at the cost to so many lives.
“So many families are living in painful uncertainty waiting for information about their missing loved ones who have been detained for years. For their sake, justice must be done. The funds are urgently needed to meet the dire humanitarian needs in Syria and should be spent there.”
However, despite the pressure growing on the new Labour government to act, there is currently no legal framework to direct these funds to Syrian victims.
Chris Doyle, a director at Council for Arab-British Understanding, added: “This money should be released for the benefit of the Syrian people.
“The money should be transferred, at the right time, to a new Syrian authority.. once one that is transparent, credible, legitimate, and inclusive is established … and that money should go to be used to the benefit of all Syrians.”
The call to return Assad’s funds to the Syrian people is also echoed by some Labour MPs.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “The UK should no longer allow itself to be used as the place where dictators and human rights abusers stash the wealth they have stolen from their own people.
“The Government needs to act swiftly to freeze Assad’s assets in our country and commence the process of the restoration of this wealth to the Syrian people.”
A spokeswoman for Redress, a campaign group seeking financial compensation for the Syrian people, said: “Funds collected by States for violations in Syria rightfully belong to Syrian victims who lack alternative avenues to recover; for the UK Government to retain the proceeds would be to indirectly profit from violations in Syria.”
The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (Ofsi) is the authority responsible for implementing and enforcing the UK’s financial sanctions on behalf of HM Treasury.
Once a person or entity is sanctioned by the UK Government, their funds and economic resources are frozen immediately by the person or organisation, such as a bank, in possession or control of them.
But an asset freeze does not involve a change in ownership of the frozen funds or economic resources, nor are they confiscated or transferred to the Treasury or the Ofsi.
A spokeswoman for HSBC said: “We do not comment on client relationships, even to confirm or deny that a relationship exists. HSBC is committed to complying with all applicable sanctions resolutions and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate.”
The Government declined to comment.
