From a Bond villain lair in the rugged heights overlooking Damascus, the all-seeing eye of a notorious Syrian military unit gazed down on a city it bled dry. Piles of documents seen by AFP expose a vast economic empire that Maher al-Assad and his network of profiteers built by pillaging a country already impoverished by nearly 14 years of civil war. Western governments long accused him and his entourage of turning Syria into a narco state, flooding the Middle East with captagon, an illegal stimulant used both as a party drug in the Gulf and to push migrant workers through punishingly long days in the gruelling heat.
But at its heart, down a steep flight of stairs, lay a series of vaults with iron-clad doors. He then made his way to Russia, they said, apparently via Iran. The chaos of their fall is apparent in the underground complex. Safes and empty Rolex and Cartier watch boxes still lie scattered about, though it is not known if the vaults were emptied before the looters arrived. In one corridor, a shrink wrap machine β probably used for bundling cash β was abandoned next to a huge safe.
That was a perfectly normal cash float, according to papers going back to Western sanctions to squeeze the Assads and their cronies did little to impede Maher and his men. But all that was left were old photographs of Maher, his wife and their three children strewn on the floor. Yet Maher could be generous and good company, according to his sister-in-law Majd al-Jadaan, a longtime opponent of the regime.
Ghassan Belal was the head of its powerful Security Bureau. Like his boss, he collected luxury cars and lived in a villa in the Yaafour district. Belal has also left Syria, according to security sources. Another soldier who abandoned his post was caught begging on the street. While thousands of the papers were burned as the regime fell, many of the classified documents survived the flames and have tales to tell.
Qaddour β who was sanctioned by the United States for bankrolling Maher through captagon, cigarette and mobile phone smuggling β denied having any dealings with him when he tried to have his EU sanctions lifted in The US Treasury and several Syrian and Lebanese security figures have also cited Belal and the bureau as key players in the captagon trade.
