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Religion Forum Index » Islam Forum » Report: Suha to receive $ 22m. a year from PA
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| Author |
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| Bob Cooper |
 Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 11:19 pm |
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http://makeashorterlink.com/?I299233C9
Report: Suha to receive $ 22m. a year from PA
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, is expected to receive a sum of
$22 million a year out of the Palestinian Authority budget, according
to the Italian newspaper Corriere De La Serra.
The paper said Suha reached an agreement about the money
during a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO's newly elected
chairman, who visited while she was staying next to her husband's
bed in the French military hospital outside Paris.
It said Abbas personally promised Suha that she would receive
$22 million a year to cover her expenses in Paris. The paper noted
that in July Arafat transferred to his wife $11 million to cover her
living costs for the first six months of the year.
Abbas and the Palestinian leadership were forced to strike the
deal with Suha after she refused to allow them to visit her husband
in hospital.
The Palestinian leaders reached the conclusion that it would be
better to make a deal with her in order to solve the crisis
surrounding Arafat's possessions and secret bank accounts.
According to Palestinian officials, the money that Suha is expected
to receive will come from secret accounts held by Arafat and his
cronies in various countries. They estimated that at least $4 billion
were being held in these secret accounts. |
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| Si-Salah |
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:07 am |
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Suha Arafat rejects $2 million offer from Palestinian Authority
By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent - Nov 10, 2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/499631.html
Suha Arafat has rejected a $2 million financial settlement from
Palestinian figures acting on behalf of the Palestinian Authority,
according to French sources |
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| Phaedrine |
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:47 am |
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In article <CRWkd.2792$Dk.517@lakeread08>,
"Bob Cooper" <rcooper1@cox.net> wrote:
Quote: Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, is expected to receive a sum of
$22 million a year out of the Palestinian Authority budget, according
to the Italian newspaper Corriere De La Serra.
What a total crock of doo doo! |
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| Richard Dell |
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 3:08 am |
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"Si-Salah" <sisalah@elbeyt.com> wrote in message
news:HyXkd.47461$km5.1926714@news20.bellglobal.com...
| Suha Arafat rejects $2 million offer from Palestinian Authority
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| By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent - Nov 10, 2004
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| http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/499631.html
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| Suha Arafat has rejected a $2 million financial settlement from
| Palestinian figures acting on behalf of the Palestinian Authority,
| according to French sources
If you think this article exonerates the odious Suha, Abu-Baboon, you
obviously did not read it. The woman is as ghastly as her husband - she
wants more! The Arafats' sentence, when they both get to Hell, will be to
stay together for eternity - they deserve each other. |
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| Ariadne |
| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 7:09 pm |
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Richard Dell wrote:
Quote: "Si-Salah" <sisalah@elbeyt.com> wrote in message
news:HyXkd.47461$km5.1926714@news20.bellglobal.com...
| Suha Arafat rejects $2 million offer from Palestinian Authority
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| By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent - Nov 10, 2004
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| http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/499631.html
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| Suha Arafat has rejected a $2 million financial settlement from
| Palestinian figures acting on behalf of the Palestinian Authority,
| according to French sources
If you think this article exonerates the odious Suha, Abu-Baboon, you
obviously did not read it. The woman is as ghastly as her husband -
she
wants more! The Arafats' sentence, when they both get to Hell, will
be to
stay together for eternity - they deserve each other.
Indeed they do.
Sunday, July 14, 2002
And a Thief, Too- Yasser Arafat takes what he likes.
And a Thief, Too- Yasser Arafat takes what he likes.
By Rachel Ehrenfeld NATIONAL REVIEW
July 29, 2002.
President Bush's call to change the Palestinian leadership and to bring
reform, accountability, and transparency to the Palestinian Authority
should
focus attention on the financial corruption of Arafat's regime. Before
Bush's speech, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser,
accurately
summed up the situation in the San Jose Mercury News: "Frankly, the
Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and cavorts with terror, . . .
is
not the basis for a Palestinian state moving forward." Judging by the
response of Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants, however, no such change
is
likely anytime soon.
How corrupt is the PA? How much money have Arafat et al. stashed away?
Where
did the money come from? How long have we known about it?
The first public evidence that Arafat's Palestine Liberation
Organization
had at least $10 billion came to light when the Pakistani-owned rogue
Bank
of Credit and Commerce International was shut down by the Bank of
England on
July 5, 1991. Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS)
published its own estimate of the PLO's loot in a 1993 briefing paper
on
organizations threatening the UK, calling it "the richest of all
terrorist
organizations." NCIS estimated the PLO's ill-gotten gains at $8-10
billion.
In addition, the PLO enjoyed an annual income of about $1.5-2 billion
from
"do nations, extortion, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug
trafficking,
money laundering, fraud, etc."
In the U.S., the General Accounting Office investigation of Arafat and
the
PA's wealth in November 1995 was kept secret because the CIA insisted
that
the publicity would hurt the "national security interest." This despite
the
CIA's own report in 1990 that the PLO had $8-14 billion.
Then came the Oslo accords. Following the 1993 ceremony on the White
House
lawn, Arafat pleaded poverty and set out, hat in hand, on a world aid
tour,
claiming that the peace process would collapse without financial
support
from the international community.
Exactly how much money Arafat and his gang have pocketed is hard to
ascertain. But the conspicuous consumption of Arafat and his inner
circle -
rows of ostentatious villas, shopping sprees in Paris, and late-model
Mercedes-Benzes - has not gone unnoticed by ordinary Palestinians, who
live
in dismal conditions.
When $326 million disappeared from PA coffers in 1996, the Palestinian
Legislative Council established a special commission to investigate
corruption within the PA. The ensuing report found that nearly 40
percent of
the PA's $800 million annual budget (coming mostly from foreign aid)
had
been lost through corruption and mismanagement. The PA's comptroller
wrote:
"The overall picture is one of a Mafia-style government, where the main
point of being in public office is to get rich quick." Arafat
suppressed the
report but promised reform.
In October 1999, Azmi Shuaibi, chairman of the PLC's Budget Committee,
had
harsh words for the PA at the 9th International Anti-Corruption
Conference
in Durban, South Africa: "The recent corruption found in the PA is
similar
to the corruption that exists in the rest of the Arab countries'
governments."
Soon after, the London Daily Telegraph revealed that computer hackers
had
broken the security code of the PLO's computer system, uncovering
records of
about $8 billion the PLO held in numbered bank accounts in New York,
Geneva,
and Zurich, and smaller secret accounts in North Africa, Europe, and
Asia.
The newspaper also unearthed further secret holdings of the PLO -
including
front companies, European real estate, and shares in Mercedes-Benz and
the
national airlines of the Maldives and Guinea-Bissau - totaling about
$50
billion for the year 2000 (up from $32 billion recorded in 1998).
Naturally,
Arafat and his men denied the report.
Ongoing demonstrations by disgruntled Palestinians frustrated with this
corruption convinced Arafat that his rule was becoming shaky. It was in
large measure to deflect internal turmoil that he launched the
intifada.
In 2000, Arab countries pledged $1 billion to the PA to ease the
economic
hardship of the Palestinians. Past dealings with Arafat, however,
prompted
them to demand that "Chairman Arafat show complete transparency in the
funds" and provide a detailed report on how the money would be spent.
Arafat
refused to comply, and the Arab leaders suspended transfer of the
money,
telling the PLO chairman that they were doing so "for fear that the
money
will end up in the wrong pockets."
By April 2001, however, things had changed: Arab donor countries,
recognizing in Arafat's intifada a convenient distraction from their
own
countries' problems, began pumping money again into the PA. At least
$45
million per month was transferred directly to Arafat, most notably from
the
Saudis and Saddam Hussein. This money was not given to alleviate the
suffering of the Palestinian people, but to fund PLO terrorist training
and
organizations, such as Islamic Jihad and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Recently, the monthly donations from Arab nations were increased to $55
million, in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars raised in
special events to fund the escalating intifada, such as the now
infamous
Saudi telethon to raise money for the families of Palestinian homicide
bombers.
Money flows in from the European Union, too. Despite voluminous
evidence of
use of aid money to fund terrorism collected by the Israeli Defense
Forces
at Arafat's compound in Ramallah - including handwritten instructions
from
Arafat himself - millions of dollars continue to pour in from the EU.
Why?
Chris Patten, the EU commissioner, wrote on May 7 that "the EU had not
seen
any hard evidence that the EU funds have been misused to finance
terrorism
or for any other purpose."
"Arafat Bombs, Europe Pays" was the headline of the German newspaper
Die
Zeit on June 7. The newspaper's special investigation into EU funding
revealed that at least 4.1 billion euros have flowed from the EU to the
PA
since the autumn of 1993, in addition to hundreds of millions of euros
in
grants contributed by individual European countries. When the Israelis
stopped transferring the PA's share of revenues from import duties
after
realizing where the money was going, the EU stepped in to replace those
funds. Each month since June 2001, 10 million euros have been paid
directly
to Arafat.
Die Zeit reported that a few European legislators called for an end to
the
funding for fear that the money was being used to fund terrorism. But
Chris
Patten dismissed these concerns, praising "Europe's especially strict
mechanisms for ex-ante and ex-post controls." Not even the interception
of
the illegal arms shipment from Iran on the Karine-A fazed EU
bureaucrats.
So, the financial umbilical cord from Europe to the PA remains, and the
IMF
representative charged with monitoring how the funds are used admits
that
"we do not oversee how every euro is spent, because we are not
auditors."
On June 19, following a slew of homicide bombings by Arafat's al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, the EU parliament voted to give an additional $17.7
million to the PA. According to the Associated Press, "Patten conceded
that
corruption in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and other problems
made
it impossible to know where every euro finally ended up [because] 'it's
an
impossible question to ask in the real world.'"
But perhaps some in the Arab world have had enough. On June 5, the
Kuwaiti
daily Al-Watan published documents it received from a Cairo branch of a
Middle Eastern bank showing that Arafat had deposited $5.1 million into
his
personal account - to support his wife and daughter, who live in Paris
and
Switzerland. According to the same report, the money came from Arab aid
funds that had been allocated for the Palestinian people.
By now, EU aid to Arafat and the PA has reached at least $4.5-5
billion.
U.S. aid to the PA runs about $75 million annually, not including the
millions of dollars sent each year from private sources. Corruption is
rife,
and today the Palestinians are further away from democracy than ever
before.
As long as Arafat controls the PA's funds and he and his gang remain in
power, no real reform is possible.
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is the Director of the Manhattan based Center for
the
Study of Corruption & the Rule of Law, and the author of the
forthcoming
book: "Funding Evil; Follow the Money Trail" (Bonus Books).
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=12801 |
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