The ties between Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia have been strong over the years. With military backing from the Kremlin and Putin, al-Assad managed to fight the rebels and maintain power over the country during the protracted civil war.
But the help was far from free.
According to Russian customs records obtained by the Financial Times, the Syrian central bank must have transported around 250 million dollars (corresponding to almost three billion Swedish kronor) in cash to the Vnukovo airport in Moscow on a total of 21 different occasions.
“What was available in the vaults”
A source within the Syrian central bank has stated that the logistically extensive transactions were mainly due to the fact that the country’s currency reserve was more or less exhausted and therefore had to pay with what was “available in the vaults”.
In this way, the Assad regime managed to get looted assets out of the country and circumvent the sanctions from the West.
About 20 luxury properties in Moscow
While the dictator and those closest to him lived a life of luxury, hundreds of thousands of countrymen lost their lives and millions of people were forced to flee. The opposition was kept in check through a series of violations.
However, on the morning of October 8, everything changed for the Assad regime when rebel groups entered the capital, Damascus. The dictator then took refuge in Moscow, via a Russian military base in Syria.
In the Russian capital, al-Assad has been granted political asylum. But he will not have any problems finding accommodation, as the family is said to have invested in at least 20 luxury properties in Moscow.