Syria channels seized Assad-era assets into opaque $50bn state fund

The latest:

Assets seized from businessmen tied to the ousted Assad regime have been moved into a state-owned fund that now sits at the centre of Syria’s economic reconstruction, the Financial Times reported. The Syrian Sovereign Fund, created last year by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, controls factories, malls, real estate and bank stakes. It reports directly to the presidency and is chaired by the tourism minister.

Details:

• The valuation: Syria’s finance minister put the fund’s assets at $50bn last year, according to the FT, but the fund has not disclosed its holdings, revenues or finances. It says its businesses employ more than 40,000 workers and that it has over 270 staff of its own.
• The director: Three people who met him identified the fund’s director as Ibrahim Succarieh, a Lebanese-Australian citizen who does not appear on the fund’s website. Succarieh is under Australian sanctions over his alleged membership of the al-Qaeda affiliate that preceded Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
• The fund’s answer: The fund declined to answer questions on its assets, revenues, management and transparency. It said it is building governance step by step as a new institution and working towards alignment with international practices for sovereign wealth funds, with the stated goal of protecting and growing state-owned assets.
• The seizures: A state committee on illegally obtained assets said the fund helped manage 32 entities in trade, services and banking formerly belonging to Assad-era businessman Samer Foz, plus a Damascus mall taken from Mohammad and Wassim Qattan. Foz and Wassim Qattan were sanctioned by Washington and Europe for backing Assad.
• The disputes: The fund has struggled to re-register ownership of some confiscated companies, while owners dispossessed under Assad have sought to reclaim stakes and some former proprietors have contested the seizures, people familiar with the matter said. The Damascus governorate said the fund settled with the mall’s original developer.
• Foreign deals: Inbound agreements include a $7bn real estate project with Emirati developer Arada, deals with Turkey’s Tiryaki Agro and Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Cables Group, and a 25% stake in a Syrian entity created by Kuwait’s Zain, which won a $747mn mobile licence. The fund also launched a payments company working with Visa.
• The real estate arm: The property unit is headed by Mohamad al-Khayyat of the Syrian-Qatari billionaire family that has worked closely with the Trump family and the White House. The fund holds land directly and manages public land for government departments, sometimes brokering deals and taking a cut of revenues, one person with direct knowledge said.
• The assessment: Thaer Laham of the Syrian Business Council called the fund the most impactful economic actor and the wealthiest entity in Syria for now. One person doing business with it said: “What’s the state today? It’s the ministries and the fund.”
• The criticism: Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report, said an opaque entity managing such sums with no officially named chief executive raises many question marks and will not build trust between citizen and state. He argued Gulf investors may find it convenient to deal with a body that bypasses red tape.

Background:

Assad was overthrown by a rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose leader Ahmed al-Sharaa became president. The new authorities inherited an economy wrecked by war and sanctions, and have made attracting Gulf capital central to reconstruction.

Between the lines:

The fund’s leverage runs beyond ownership: by holding assets in every sector and deciding who operates and invests in them, its officials shape access to the economy itself. Yazigi’s point cuts both ways — the same opacity that undermines domestic trust removes bureaucratic friction for Gulf investors, which may explain why Damascus has not rushed to publish its books.

What’s next

Watch whether the fund discloses its holdings or names its director publicly, progress on Arada’s 11,000-unit New Damascus project, and how contested ownership claims from dispossessed former proprietors are resolved.