BEIRUT, Lebanon — The king and queen of Jordan had secret Swiss bank accounts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a major data breach from one of Switzerland’s largest banks. So were the sons of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s deposed president, and business magnates who prospered during his 30-year rule.
Other accounts were linked to spy guides from Egypt, Jordan and Yemen who collaborated with the United States and were accused of human rights violations.
Citizens in the Middle East have long had no information about the finances of their country’s elites, other than what they could gather by peering over the palace walls.
Now, the data breach from the bank Credit Suisse has opened a peephole into the private wealth of a range of potentates, raising new questions about the ability of elites to turn public posts into private profit in countries where lack of transparency creates openings for corruption. .
“What you have is a very sophisticated, corrupt elite that is very integrated into the global financial system,” said Nadim Houry, the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.
Allowing the politically connected to enrich themselves, he said, is the failure of many states to create boundaries between the powers of the rulers and the state.
“It looks like a state, it sounds like a state, but in the end when it comes to the land’s assets,” he said, “many of the potentates act like absolute monarchs in possession of personal property.”
Credit Suisse’s classified banking information was leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and made available to DailyExpertNews and other news organizations through the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
The data contains account information spanning a number of decades and includes the names of account holders, the opening and closing dates of their accounts, and their maximum and closing balances. The leaked data did not include information about cash flow through the accounts, the source of the money, or the extent of any bank investigations into whether the money may have been contaminated.
Most of the account holders named in the leak are either out of power or dead, reducing the likelihood that the disclosures will lead to accountability efforts. But little suggests that officials in power now have fewer opportunities for personal gain than their predecessors had, Mr Houry said, despite efforts by some countries to tighten government spending controls following mass protests against corruption and autocratic rule during the Arab Spring, which spread across the Middle East in 2011.
“Frankly, they were all window dressing because the power dynamics have not changed and no state controller is able to hold the powerful accountable,” said Mr Houry.
In the years before President Mubarak of Egypt was ousted in a 2011 Arab Spring uprising, a circle of businessmen close to him made huge fortunes when Mr. Mubarak privatized state assets and made other attempts to liberalize the country’s economy. . His sons, Gamal and Alaa, also became rich.
The Mubarak brothers had six accounts with Credit Suisse, including a joint account that grew to about $196 million in 2003, according to the leaked data.
Each of the sons’ fathers-in-law also had bank accounts worth millions of dollars, as did other businessmen associated with the Mubaraks, who were being tried by the Egyptian authorities on charges of corruption.
As the Arab Spring progressed in the Middle East, Swiss authorities announced they had frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in assets related to Mr Mubarak and his government, as well as assets belonging to people associated with governments in Syria, Libya and Tunisia. But details of exactly what was frozen have remained scarce.
Through their attorneys, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak told DailyExpertNews that all of their assets had been legally obtained through their “successful professional business activities” and had been duly declared to the necessary authorities.
They said the leaked account information could contain “some material inaccuracies”, but went no further.
The only sitting head of state in the leaked data was King Abdullah II of Jordan, a close associate of the United States whose kingdom has received billions in military and economic aid from the United States over the years. That aid totaled $22 billion in 2018.
According to the leaked data, King Abdullah had six Swiss accounts, including one that had more than $224 million in 2015. His wife, Queen Rania, had an account that exceeded $40 million in 2013. Those accounts were closed in 2015 and 2016.
Jordan’s Royal Hashemite Court said in a statement that there had been no “unlawful or improper conduct” in relation to the bank accounts.
Most of the money in the king’s largest account came from the sale of a plane in May 2015 for $212 million, the statement said. The rest was his ‘personal wealth’, inherited from his father, the previous monarch, and invested ever since.
In Queen Rania’s account, some of the king’s personal wealth was reserved for the couple’s four children, who were then minors, the statement said. The leaked balance was inaccurate, it said, but it didn’t provide an alternate figure.
The funds were used to buy a smaller aircraft, for investments, personal expenses and social and economic projects for Jordanians and to maintain Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem under the king’s authority, the statement said.
The former president of Algeria, Abdulaziz Bouteflika, had a shared account with several family members who owned $1.1 million in 2005, the leaked data showed. He was ousted after 20 years in power in 2019 and died in 2021.
Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, who ruled for nearly five decades until his death in 2020, had two accounts, one with nearly $126 million in 2003 and another with $57 million in 2015.
The accounts of intelligence chiefs or their family members included individuals who worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency on covert operations and counter-terrorism, and some accused of monitoring torture and other human rights abuses.
In 2003, close relatives of Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s long-serving intelligence chief and a key CIA interlocutor, opened a joint account whose balance would rise to $52 million a few years later, the data showed. .
Mr. Suleiman died in 2012, but the account survived Mr. Mubarak’s fall and remained open until 2016. Attempts by the reporting project to reach his relatives were unsuccessful.
From 2000 to 2005, Saad Kheir headed Jordanian Intelligence, a major US counter-terrorism partner that, according to human rights groups, has interrogated terrorist suspects for the United States. In 2003, he opened an account whose balance would rise to $21.6 million before closing after his death in 2009.
While it was possible that the money belonged to intelligence chiefs for covert government activities, the men suggested it was for personal use, said Douglas London, a retired senior operations officer at the CIA.
“These were the right hands and accomplices for the autocrats, so they were well looked after for their loyalty and service,” he said. “That’s just, for better or for worse, how things work in these countries.”