Syrian state media broadcast on Sunday a workshop held by First Lady, Asma Assad, during which she announced that the presidency will now be handling the files of the regime’s war wounded and economic reform program.
It was evident that the declaration was addressed at business tycoon and president Bashar Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, with Asma effectively taking over the handling of these affairs from him after he had dramatically fallen from grace with the regime.
The issue of the war wounded and the reform program will be directly managed by the presidency from now on out of its keenness on keeping these efforts in the “right direction,” she said.
Asma acknowledged that Syria was enduring a deep economic crisis and that the situation was “difficult.” She vowed to offer an emergency grant to all war wounded in the days to come.
This proposal had previously been offered by Makhlouf in two previous Facebook video posts addressed to Bashar. He had vowed that he would not delay in paying his dues and that they would go to the “poor”.
Syria’s business scene has been rattled by the dispute between the regime and Makhlouf as the latter laid out his grievances in his Facebook videos. Makhlouf issued a video statement on Sunday saying officials had told him to quit as head of mobile operator Syriatel, in the latest twist in a tussle over assets and taxes that has uncovered a rift at the heart of the ruling elite.
Makhlouf, once widely considered part of the president’s inner circle and the country’s leading businessman whom the US Treasury said was the front man for Assad’s family wealth, has a business empire that ranges from telecoms and real estate to construction and oil trading. He played a big role in financing Assad’s war effort, Western officials have said, and is under US and EU sanctions.
In Sunday’s message, Makhlouf who rose to prominence in the decade before the conflict in 2011, attacked war profiteers whom he said had moved in during the war.
Meanwhile, opposition sources have raised doubts over the death of prominent businessman Ghaith Boustani, who is close to Bashar’s brother, Maher. Boustani, 32, was said to have passed away from a heart attack on Friday, but the sources said that he was killed for refusing to pay dues owed to the regime.
Boustani is among the new businessmen who emerged on the Syrian scene during the war.
Al-Hurra television reported that Bashar recently met with businessman Samer al-Foz to discuss economy, including Syria’s telecommunications companies, raising questions that he may replace Makhlouf.
The Syrian economy is enduring one its worst crisis as the pounded weakened further against the dollar. It fell to a record low of 1,750 to the dollar on Sunday with fears the Assad-Makhlouf rift would further damage an economy already hit by tougher US sanctions and reeling from the damaging impact of the financial crisis in neighboring Lebanon, which choked a main source of dollars into the country.
