ck..ck..ck Abu Amar..
Kenapa begitu? harimau mati meninggalkan belang, manusia mati meninggalkan nama.
rahardjo mustadjab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Silahkan baca baik-baik dulu, baru komentar.
Salam,
RM
-------------------------------
Who will get Arafat's millions?
Wife is fighting Palestinian officials for assets,
Arab TV reports
- Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, November 7, 2004
Ramallah, West Bank -- The wife of Yasser Arafat was
locked in a bitter dispute with Palestinian officials
over the fate of his vast secret fortune as the
Palestinian leader lay apparently near death in a
French hospital, according to a report on the Arab TV
network Al-Jazeera.
Arafat's secret assets have been estimated at anywhere
between $200 million (Forbes magazine) and $6 billion
(U.S. and Israeli intelligence). Forbes listed him
ninth in its ranking of the world's wealthiest heads
of state -- even though he is a ruler without a
country and many of his people are refugees.
In Paris, the struggle over Arafat's hidden millions
threatened to overshadow his final days. His wife,
Suha Arafat, hopes to inherit at least part of his
fortune. But, according to Al-Jazeera, Palestinian
leaders demand that it be handed over to the
Palestinian people.
The assets are managed in a complex network of bank
accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details
are known only to his closest confidant, financial
adviser Mohammed Rashid.
Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but
apparently even she does not know all the ins and outs
of the secret accounts. Al-Jazeera reported that she
asked Rashid to make out a list of Arafat's assets and
that he refused, saying he would report only to the
Palestinian Authority.
According to Al-Jazeera, Arafat had written a will
leaving at least some of his fortune to his wife and
their 9-year-old daughter Zahwa, but other reports
said Arafat has no will, leaving most of his fortune
in the hands of Rashid.
When the 75-year-old Palestinian leader was flown to a
military hospital outside Paris on Oct. 29, Suha
Arafat took control of his medical care, although the
couple have lived apart for nearly four years.
Thirty years younger than Arafat, the Christian,
Sorbonne-educated Suha Tawil married the Palestinian
leader in a secret ceremony in 1992 in Tunisia, where
she worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
After Arafat's return to the Palestinian territories
in 1994, she played the part of Palestinian first
lady, but spent most of her time in Paris. She left
the family's home in Gaza in January 2001 and took
Zahwa to Paris, where they have lived ever since at
the five-star Bristol Hotel.
French officials earlier this year began investigating
the transfer of $11.5 million from Swiss bank accounts
to accounts in France controlled by Suha Arafat.
"What is so strange for the Palestinian president to
send any amount of money to his family and his wife,
who is protecting the Palestinian interests abroad,
and the money came and will come legally?" she told an
interviewer from Al-Hayat, an Arab-language newspaper
published in London.
With Arafat apparently near death, questions linger
about what has happened to the billions in aid money
from the international community to build the nascent
Palestinian state. Many suspect that Suha Arafat's
luxurious lifestyle -- as well as the cars, villas and
expensive education of other prominent Palestinian
families -- was bought with cash stolen from
international donors and tax revenues.
In 1997, the Palestinian Authority's own officials
found that $323 million -- more than a third of the
total budget -- had gone missing. The International
Monetary Fund said last year that $750 million had
been "diverted" from the Palestinian budget up to the
year 2000.
Identifying Arafat's personal fortune and separating
it from numerous secret bank accounts in the name of
the PLO and Fatah, his political faction, will be no
easy task.
Jean-Claude Robard, a Swiss investment adviser, told
Al-Jazeera that Arafat opened his first secret bank
account in 1965 with a $50,000 check from the emir of
Kuwait. Since then, Robard said, Arafat has set up
other accounts in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and
the Cayman Islands. Robard said Arafat also owns a
number of hotels and holiday resorts in Spain, Italy,
France, Switzerland and Austria and is the main
shareholder in two cellular telephone companies
operating in Tunisia and Algeria.
After the Oslo peace accords were finalized in 1994,
tax and customs revenues collected by Israel on
Palestinian salaries and goods were transferred to a
personal account in Arafat's name held at an Israeli
bank branch in Tel Aviv. Between 1996 and 2000, Israel
paid more than $500 million in tax revenues on oil
sales alone into Arafat's personal account, according
to a report by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
In December 2002, an Israeli accountant named Ozrad
Lev said in an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv
that he was involved in the illegal transfer of $300
million in Palestinian funds to Arafat through a
secret Swiss account. The funds were transferred from
an official Palestinian account at a branch of the
Arab Bank in Ramallah by Arafat and one of his top
aides, said Lev.
He also said he helped open and manage the Swiss
account with Yossi Ginossar, a former Israeli security
official with widespread Palestinian business dealings
who died earlier this year.
Lev told Maariv that the account was opened at the
Swiss bank Lombard Odier & Cie in April 1997 using
copies of Arafat's personal documents, including his
passport. The account was opened in the name of a
front company, Ledbury, which was later changed to
Crouper.
Two years ago, American accountant Jim Prince told
CBS' "60 Minutes" that part of the Palestinian
leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close
to $1 billion, with investments in companies such as a
Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell
phone company and venture capital funds in the United
States and the Cayman Islands.
Although the money for the portfolio came from public
funds, including Palestinian taxes, virtually none of
it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all
controlled by Arafat, Prince said, adding that none of
these dealings was made public.
Al-Jazeera said some of Arafat's businesses are in
partnership with Arab politicians, former officials
and entrepreneurs, including Rifaat Assad, a brother
of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, and Barzan
Al-Takriti, a half-brother of deposed Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein. Al-Takriti now is under arrest in
Baghdad.
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