Arafat Mystery Lingers: Whereabouts of His Hidden Fortune
STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times
JERUSALEM - As Yasir Arafat lay dying in Paris, the battle over his legacy involved an unstated but widely acknowledged concern: He personally controlled several billion dollars, and no one else knew where it all was.
The extent and whereabouts of this fortune, which relied on different aides and advisers as co-signers, had been a hidden part of the disputes at his bedside, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, giving the final days of this revolutionary figure the elements of a Victorian novel.
Mr. Arafat, who died early Thursday morning, kept knowledge of the accounts compartmentalized, and only he knew all the details, well-informed Israeli officials said, in assertions confirmed reluctantly by Palestinian officials who did not want to harm Mr. Arafat's legacy.
Much about the financing of the Palestinian movement in the last four decades has been shrouded in secrecy, and its details are hard to pin down. But Palestinians said Mr. Arafat used the money to finance the Palestinian movement and administration, to pay salaries, bestow gifts, ensure loyalty, establish embassies, buy arms and pay groups ranging from charities to young fighters like Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
Mr. Arafat, abstemious, spent very little money on himself, living like a soldier with a narrow bed and a few uniforms in his closet. But the pattern of his revolutionary days in exile - financing the Palestine Liberation Organization through secret contributions, the black market and extortion, and being ready to run at a moment's notice - persisted most obviously in his refusal to trust others and his desire to keep large amounts of cash available in case of emergency.
There has been much speculation about how much money went to support the lavish living of his wife, Suha, in Paris, with reports from her enemies in the Palestinian Authority of subsidies of some $100,000 a month. But the sums were relatively small compared with Mr. Arafat's total holdings.
But the way he managed money, and the secrecy and corruption surrounding the administration of the Palestinian Authority, have tainted his legacy with ordinary Palestinians and left a burden for his political heirs.
"Some of it will be buried with him," a senior Israeli official said. "He had many special sources, and no one knows the full sum of money in these accounts. Even Suha doesn't know. He had several financial advisers, and each of them knows part of the story. No one knows it all, except Arafat."
Last year, an audit of Palestinian Authority finances by the International Monetary Fund disclosed that Mr. Arafat had diverted $900 million in public funds to a bank account he controlled from 1995 to 2002. Most of the cash, diverted from budget revenues, went to a variety of commercial ventures.
Last February, the French government opened a tax and money-laundering investigation into the deposit of about 11.5 million euros, nearly $15 million at today's rates, into the accounts of Mrs. Arafat between July 2002 and July 2003.
To try to bring some transparency and efficiency to the accounts of the Palestinian Authority, the United States and European Union pressed Mr. Arafat to appoint a former official of the International Monetary Fund, Salam Fayyad, as finance minister. Mr. Fayyad has made efforts to rationalize spending and to account for international aid, and discovered some $600 million in authority funds invested in about 79 commercial ventures for products including Canadian biopharmaceuticals to Algerian cellphones.
But Mr. Fayyad, who has not returned many calls for comment, has in the past acknowledged that he knows only part of the picture.
Many of the sources of the money are now a matter of public record. Money came to the Palestine Liberation Organization from Arab and other governments, the European Union and international aid agencies, as well as from monopolies on the sale of oil, gas, cement and other goods in the West Bank and Gaza.
Through various financial advisers, like Fuad Shubaki, Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians made millions of dollars through special export licenses to sell Iraqi oil that were granted by Saddam Hussein, who was sworn to Israel's destruction and valued Mr. Arafat's support in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a senior Israeli official said.
Mr. Arafat also granted monopolies to top aides. Mr. Shubaki, now in a Palestinian jail in Jericho, had the monopoly for the varied Palestinian security forces, selling food and imported goods.
Jibril Rajoub, Mr. Arafat's national security adviser, who ran the security forces on the West Bank, was given a monopoly over oil and gas sales there, while his counterpart in Gaza, Muhammad Dahlan, controlled a market in special permits for passage in and out of Gaza, Israeli and United Nations officials said.
A knowledgeable Palestinian official said he "could not deny that these kinds of concessions exist."
Gaza is mostly sand. "But sand for cement costs more in Gaza than in Israel, and the reason is the cut taken by the Palestinian Authority," a senior United Nations aid official said. There are also protection rackets run by the Palestinian security services there and in the West Bank, he said.
There were also legitimate investments in a myriad of companies, many of them in West Africa but also in the United States and Europe.
The Israeli officials suggested that some of the money may now disappear, and agreed with French officials that some of the battling at his deathbed in Paris was an effort to gain information and access to those accounts.
The Israelis believe that Mr. Arafat never signed a will. "He never believed, even when he was sick, that he would die," an Israeli official said. "To my knowledge, he never signed anything."
His death presents severe problems for his political successors, who will need to put their hands on considerable sums to consolidate their positions.
"I think the Palestinians need money, and no one knows where all the money is," a senior Israeli official said. If Mr. Arafat's presumed successor, Mahmoud Abbas, "had the money, then he could consolidate his position faster, but now it will be harder," the official said.
Palestinians have complained that their salaries for the month of Ramadan, which will end in an expensive feast, have been late and paid only in part. In the last few days, Mr. Fayyad has told American officials that he does not have the money to pay the salaries.
Mr. Arafat's most visible current financial adviser, Muhammad Rashid, is a Kurd who is believed to control nearly $1 billion in assets for Mr. Arafat and the P.L.O., Israeli officials said. But Mr. Rashid, who went to Paris to be at Mr. Arafat's bedside, is only one of a number of financial advisers, and not necessarily the main one, they said.
Mr. Shubaki was the chief financial officer of the Palestinian Authority from its beginning in 1994, and has said little about what he knows. Mr. Arafat was pressed by the Americans to jail him after the fiasco of the Karine A incident in 2002, when Palestinian Authority money and Mr. Shubaki were linked through documents to the purchase of 50 tons of arms and explosives. They were to be smuggled into Palestinian territory on a boat called the Karine A, intercepted by the Israelis. That incident broke President Bush's faith in Mr. Arafat, Mr. Bush has said.
In 1997, there were Israeli news reports that some $150 million a year in tax revenue that Israel owed the Palestinians had been sent to a secret bank account in Tel Aviv under Mr. Arafat's personal control. Israeli officials said then that the money was for Mr. Arafat to use to flee with top aides in the event of a coup, or for use to pay off political allies, expenditures that donor nations would not approve.
Jaweed al-Ghussein, a former P.L.O. finance minister who quit under a cloud in 1996 and now lives in London, told The Associated Press that Mr. Arafat's financial empire was worth between $3 billion and $5 billion at the time - a surprisingly large margin of estimate.
He said that in the 1980's, he gave Mr. Arafat a check for some $10 million every month from the P.L.O. budget, to be used to pay fighters and their families. But Mr. Arafat would never account for his spending, citing national security. Mr. Ghussein also said Mr. Hussein had given Mr. Arafat $150 million in three payments for siding with Iraq in the 1991 gulf war.
Mr. Arafat provided money to everyone around him, Palestinians and Israelis said. "He was very friendly to his friends, to ensure they lived well," a Palestinian official said. "And he often gave money to those who criticized him. You want satisfied people around you, not angry ones."
JERUSALEM - As Yasir Arafat lay dying in Paris, the battle over his legacy involved an unstated but widely acknowledged concern: He personally controlled several billion dollars, and no one else knew where it all was.
The extent and whereabouts of this fortune, which relied on different aides and advisers as co-signers, had been a hidden part of the disputes at his bedside, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, giving the final days of this revolutionary figure the elements of a Victorian novel.
Mr. Arafat, who died early Thursday morning, kept knowledge of the accounts compartmentalized, and only he knew all the details, well-informed Israeli officials said, in assertions confirmed reluctantly by Palestinian officials who did not want to harm Mr. Arafat's legacy.
Much about the financing of the Palestinian movement in the last four decades has been shrouded in secrecy, and its details are hard to pin down. But Palestinians said Mr. Arafat used the money to finance the Palestinian movement and administration, to pay salaries, bestow gifts, ensure loyalty, establish embassies, buy arms and pay groups ranging from charities to young fighters like Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
Mr. Arafat, abstemious, spent very little money on himself, living like a soldier with a narrow bed and a few uniforms in his closet. But the pattern of his revolutionary days in exile - financing the Palestine Liberation Organization through secret contributions, the black market and extortion, and being ready to run at a moment's notice - persisted most obviously in his refusal to trust others and his desire to keep large amounts of cash available in case of emergency.
There has been much speculation about how much money went to support the lavish living of his wife, Suha, in Paris, with reports from her enemies in the Palestinian Authority of subsidies of some $100,000 a month. But the sums were relatively small compared with Mr. Arafat's total holdings.
But the way he managed money, and the secrecy and corruption surrounding the administration of the Palestinian Authority, have tainted his legacy with ordinary Palestinians and left a burden for his political heirs.
"Some of it will be buried with him," a senior Israeli official said. "He had many special sources, and no one knows the full sum of money in these accounts. Even Suha doesn't know. He had several financial advisers, and each of them knows part of the story. No one knows it all, except Arafat."
Last year, an audit of Palestinian Authority finances by the International Monetary Fund disclosed that Mr. Arafat had diverted $900 million in public funds to a bank account he controlled from 1995 to 2002. Most of the cash, diverted from budget revenues, went to a variety of commercial ventures.
Last February, the French government opened a tax and money-laundering investigation into the deposit of about 11.5 million euros, nearly $15 million at today's rates, into the accounts of Mrs. Arafat between July 2002 and July 2003.
To try to bring some transparency and efficiency to the accounts of the Palestinian Authority, the United States and European Union pressed Mr. Arafat to appoint a former official of the International Monetary Fund, Salam Fayyad, as finance minister. Mr. Fayyad has made efforts to rationalize spending and to account for international aid, and discovered some $600 million in authority funds invested in about 79 commercial ventures for products including Canadian biopharmaceuticals to Algerian cellphones.
But Mr. Fayyad, who has not returned many calls for comment, has in the past acknowledged that he knows only part of the picture.
Many of the sources of the money are now a matter of public record. Money came to the Palestine Liberation Organization from Arab and other governments, the European Union and international aid agencies, as well as from monopolies on the sale of oil, gas, cement and other goods in the West Bank and Gaza.
Through various financial advisers, like Fuad Shubaki, Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians made millions of dollars through special export licenses to sell Iraqi oil that were granted by Saddam Hussein, who was sworn to Israel's destruction and valued Mr. Arafat's support in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a senior Israeli official said.
Mr. Arafat also granted monopolies to top aides. Mr. Shubaki, now in a Palestinian jail in Jericho, had the monopoly for the varied Palestinian security forces, selling food and imported goods.
Jibril Rajoub, Mr. Arafat's national security adviser, who ran the security forces on the West Bank, was given a monopoly over oil and gas sales there, while his counterpart in Gaza, Muhammad Dahlan, controlled a market in special permits for passage in and out of Gaza, Israeli and United Nations officials said.
A knowledgeable Palestinian official said he "could not deny that these kinds of concessions exist."
Gaza is mostly sand. "But sand for cement costs more in Gaza than in Israel, and the reason is the cut taken by the Palestinian Authority," a senior United Nations aid official said. There are also protection rackets run by the Palestinian security services there and in the West Bank, he said.
There were also legitimate investments in a myriad of companies, many of them in West Africa but also in the United States and Europe.
The Israeli officials suggested that some of the money may now disappear, and agreed with French officials that some of the battling at his deathbed in Paris was an effort to gain information and access to those accounts.
The Israelis believe that Mr. Arafat never signed a will. "He never believed, even when he was sick, that he would die," an Israeli official said. "To my knowledge, he never signed anything."
His death presents severe problems for his political successors, who will need to put their hands on considerable sums to consolidate their positions.
"I think the Palestinians need money, and no one knows where all the money is," a senior Israeli official said. If Mr. Arafat's presumed successor, Mahmoud Abbas, "had the money, then he could consolidate his position faster, but now it will be harder," the official said.
Palestinians have complained that their salaries for the month of Ramadan, which will end in an expensive feast, have been late and paid only in part. In the last few days, Mr. Fayyad has told American officials that he does not have the money to pay the salaries.
Mr. Arafat's most visible current financial adviser, Muhammad Rashid, is a Kurd who is believed to control nearly $1 billion in assets for Mr. Arafat and the P.L.O., Israeli officials said. But Mr. Rashid, who went to Paris to be at Mr. Arafat's bedside, is only one of a number of financial advisers, and not necessarily the main one, they said.
Mr. Shubaki was the chief financial officer of the Palestinian Authority from its beginning in 1994, and has said little about what he knows. Mr. Arafat was pressed by the Americans to jail him after the fiasco of the Karine A incident in 2002, when Palestinian Authority money and Mr. Shubaki were linked through documents to the purchase of 50 tons of arms and explosives. They were to be smuggled into Palestinian territory on a boat called the Karine A, intercepted by the Israelis. That incident broke President Bush's faith in Mr. Arafat, Mr. Bush has said.
In 1997, there were Israeli news reports that some $150 million a year in tax revenue that Israel owed the Palestinians had been sent to a secret bank account in Tel Aviv under Mr. Arafat's personal control. Israeli officials said then that the money was for Mr. Arafat to use to flee with top aides in the event of a coup, or for use to pay off political allies, expenditures that donor nations would not approve.
Jaweed al-Ghussein, a former P.L.O. finance minister who quit under a cloud in 1996 and now lives in London, told The Associated Press that Mr. Arafat's financial empire was worth between $3 billion and $5 billion at the time - a surprisingly large margin of estimate.
He said that in the 1980's, he gave Mr. Arafat a check for some $10 million every month from the P.L.O. budget, to be used to pay fighters and their families. But Mr. Arafat would never account for his spending, citing national security. Mr. Ghussein also said Mr. Hussein had given Mr. Arafat $150 million in three payments for siding with Iraq in the 1991 gulf war.
Mr. Arafat provided money to everyone around him, Palestinians and Israelis said. "He was very friendly to his friends, to ensure they lived well," a Palestinian official said. "And he often gave money to those who criticized him. You want satisfied people around you, not angry ones."
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