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=> How Bush causes the Palastinans to suffer...

How Bush causes the Palastinans to suffer...

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Blame everything on George...why not? Reports vary on leader's finances From staff and wire reports-USA Today JERUSALEM — In his four decades as Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat has run a financial empire that includes far-flung Palestine Liberation Organization investments in airlines, banana plantations and high-tech companies, and money hidden in bank accounts across the globe. Jaweed al-Ghussein, a former PLO finance minister, said the empire was worth $3 billion to $5 billion when he quit in 1996. No one will say how much it's worth now. Arafat, 75, has long resisted proper accounting for the funds, which include Arab payments to the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, and Western aid to his self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, after interim peace deals with Israel in the 1990s. Arafat lived frugally but needed large sums to maintain loyalties. He would register investments and bank accounts in the names of loyalists to both buy their support and protect the holdings from scrutiny and seizure, al-Ghussein said. Only Arafat had the full picture, he said, and it's not clear whether he has a will or financial records. Mohammed Rashid, Arafat's financial adviser, denied his boss was rich. “Arafat has no personal property in any part in the world,” Rashid told Al-Arabiya television on Sunday. “He doesn't even have a tent, a house, an orchard or any account that we can call ‘personal' in the name of Yasser Arafat.” However, Forbes magazine ranked him No. 6 on its 2003 list of the richest “kings, queens and despots,” estimating he was worth at least $300 million. Shalom Harari, a former top Israeli intelligence official, said Arafat may have stashed up to $700 million, part of it for an emergency such as a new exile, especially with Israel threatening to expel him. Edward Abington, a former U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem who now advises the Palestinians, said Palestinian Authority accounts are now supervised by Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, a former staffer at the International Monetary Fund, and audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. “I have been told by responsible authorities that they do not know of secret accounts and that money has been recaptured and put into monitored accounts,” Abington said Monday in a telephone interview from Ramallah, in the West Bank. Last year, the International Monetary Fund reported $900 million in Palestinian Authority income never reached the treasury during the first six years of Arafat's rule. The money, including Israeli tax rebates and revenue from monopolies on cigarettes, fuel and cement, instead went to a Tel Aviv account controlled by Arafat. But Karim Nashashibi, the IMF representative in the Palestinian areas, said the $900 million has been restored to the treasury under Fayyad, who has won international praise for his work. In the past three years, Fayyad sharply curtailed Arafat's spending powers, cutting the budget for the “president's office” from $100 million in 2002 to $43 million this year. Suha Arafat, Arafat's wife of 13 years and mother of his daughter, lives in Paris. This year, French prosecutors launched a money-laundering probe into transfers of $11.4 million into her accounts. She has refused to talk to reporters about Palestinian finances. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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