Assad's uncle used Guernsey adviser to secretly manage his vast wealth

An uncle of the recently ousted Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, used an adviser in Guernsey to secretly manage his wealth, which included a vast European property empire worth hundreds of millions of euros that prosecutors claim was acquired with funds looted from the war-torn state.

- David Pegg Ed Siddons Rob Byrne Meriem Mahdhi

Rifaat al-Assad, known as the Butcher of Hama for overseeing the violent suppression of a rebellion in the 1980s, has been accused of war crimes by Swiss prosecutors. In 2020, he was convicted by a French court of embezzling Syrian state funds and pouring the money into luxury properties, with the French state seizing assets worth €90m.

In a joint investigation, the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have now identified him as a client of a Guernsey consultant who was fined by regulators this year. Ginette Louise Blondel, 40, was banned from working as a director for nine years and fined £210,000 by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission in March.

Originally employed as a personal assistant for the son of her client, then as a consultant, Blondel went on to manage a complex trust structure on the family's behalf, according to a notice published by the regulator. In one instance, her personal bank account was used to distribute €1m to third parties on her client's behalf.

The notice does not name Blondel's employer, simply referring to them as "Client 1". However, details of the case, and evidence gathered by international prosecutors, indicate that Client 1 was Rifaat al-Assad.

A brother of Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in Syria in 1971, Rifaat was the head of the Defence Brigades. His elite forces allegedly oversaw the massacre of an estimated 20,000 people in the town of Hama in 1982.

The Assad regime collapsed this month as rebel groups seized control of the capital, Damascus, after more than a decade of civil war. Assad family members have been granted asylum in Moscow. It is unclear whether Rifaat, 86, is among them.

His European wealth remains in limbo, with freezing orders imposed in the UK, Spain and France, meaning properties cannot be sold without permission from the authorities.