Butcher of Hama used a Guernsey enabler to manage his tainted wealth secretly.

SPEED READ

1. Ginette Louise Blondel, a financial wealth manager from Guernsey, has recently made headlines for her involvement in managing funds for
1. Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
2. Rifaat al-Assad is known as the “Butcher of Hama” for his alleged role in the 1982 Hama massacre, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.
3. Blondel worked without a license for Rifaat al-Assad from 2013 to 2020, helping him manage millions of pounds allegedly looted from Syria.
4. In September 2021, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) launched an investigation into Ginette Louise Blondel.
1. This investigation was prompted by her unlicensed work for Rifaat al-Assad, an alleged war criminal and kleptocrat.
2. Blondel had been managing funds and providing financial advice to al-Assad, who was classified as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) and under investigation for money laundering since 2012
3. The GFSC found that Blondel breached various regulations, including carrying out regulated activities without a license and failing to meet the minimum licensing criteria.
4. In March 2024, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission fined £210,000 and banned her from holding financial positions for nine years.
5. Despite the fine and ban, she has not faced criminal prosecution.
6. The GUERNSEY regulator’s [GFSC] case against Blondel is a window into the role played by PROFESSIONAL ENABLERS in enabling ultra-wealthy individuals – even those suspected of the most serious atrocities – to shelter and grow their wealth in Europe.

WATCH THE NEWS

• https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2024-03-13/guernsey-financial-consultant-knowingly-worked-for-alleged-war-criminal

LONG READ

JOINT INVESTIGATION, THE GUARDIAN, AND THE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

1. In a joint investigation, the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have now identified Rifaat as a client of a Guernsey consultant who was fined by Guernsey regulators earlier this year.
2. Rifaat al-Assad, An uncle of the recently ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, used a disgraced adviser, GINETTE LOUISE BLONDEL [BLONDEL], in Guernsey to secretly manage his wealth, which included.
1. A vast European property empire worth hundreds of millions of euros that prosecutors claim was acquired with funds looted from the war-torn state.
3. The Assad regime collapsed this month as rebel groups rose and 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, now 86, is among them. Rifaat’s present whereabouts are unknown. Attempts to reach him for comment via the Syrian embassy in London were unsuccessful.
4. 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.

BACKGROUND ON RIFAAT AL-ASSAD.

1. A brother of Hafiz al-Assad, who seized power in Syria in a 1971 coup, Rifaat al-Assad was the head of the Defence Brigades. 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. His elite forces allegedly oversaw the massacre of an estimated 20,000 people in the town of Hama in 1982.
2. Philip Grant, the executive director of Trial International, filed a criminal complaint against him in Switzerland. 
1. “Rifaat al-Assad’s crimes, particularly the 1982 Hama massacre, are among the gravest atrocities of our time,”
3. Rifaat al-Assad WAS Expelled from Syria in 1984 after staging a failed coup against his brother.
4. Rifaat left France for Syria in 2021, shortly before the French court of appeal upheld his June 2020 conviction for money laundering and aggravated tax fraud, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison.
5. He has denied the French and Spanish money laundering charges, claiming the Saudi royal family gave him most of his fortune.

FRENCH AND SPANISH MONEY LAUNDERING CHARGES + SWISS CHARGES ON WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

1. In 2013, two years into the Syrian civil war, Swiss prosecutors began investigating Rifaat’s alleged role in the Hama case.
2. In 2019, a judgment from one of the cases against him disclosed that more than 500 properties belonging to Rifaat were under asset freezes.
3. 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.
4. in 2020, Spanish prosecutors alleged that the source of the funds used to buy those properties was a combination of $200m stolen from the Syrian state and disguised as expenses and a $100m loan from Libya.
5. In 2024 [MARCH], Swiss prosecutors charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1984 – 2024 - RIFAAT AL-ASSAD, WEALTH

• After being expelled from Syria in 1984, he set up a home in France and developed a €800m real estate portfolio with offices, villas, mansions, and apartments in London, Paris, and Marbella.

HIS PROPERTY EMPIRE HAS INCLUDED:

1. The Witanhurst estate in Highgate, north London – the second largest private residence in the capital after Buckingham Palace. Rifaat sold it for £32m to developers in 2007 after leaving it in disrepair.
2. A £50m mansion in South Street, Mayfair. Owned through a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, it was frozen by British proceeds of crime prosecutors in 2017.
3. A seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom estate in Leatherhead, Surrey, with a gym, tennis court and indoor swimming pool. It was sold for £4m in 2016 before prosecutors could impose an asset freeze.
4. A seven-storey mansion on Avenue Foch, which leads to the Arc de Triomphe in the most expensive arrondissement of Paris. Art and furnishings from the property were auctioned, but the property remains frozen.
5. Thirty-two apartments on Paris Avenue du Président Kennedy run along the bank of the Seine next to the Eiffel Tower.
6. La Máquina is a €60m estate occupying almost a third of the Marbella resort town of Benahavís. La Máquina’s footprint is so expansive that the Assads were reported to have considered transforming it into an enclave exclusively for wealthy Syrians.

GUERNSEY ADVISOR [GINETTE LOUISE BLONDEL] NAMED IN A SPANISH INDICTMENT PAPER AGAINST RIFAAT 2020

1. Blondel was named in a Spanish indictment paper against Rifaat alongside other advisers and multiple banks.
2. She was described as a representative for one of his family’s corporate vehicles.
3. Spanish prosecutors alleged that the source of the funds used to buy those properties was a combination of

• $200m stolen from the Syrian state and disguised as expenses and
• A $100m loan from Libya.

4. Rifaat and his associates were accused of profiting from.

• “Huge illicit resources from multiple criminal activities: extortion, threats, smuggling, plundering of archaeological wealth, usurpation of real estate, [and] drug trafficking”.

5. The present status of the Spanish case needs to be clarified, and prosecutors have yet to respond to inquiries.
6. https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2020/09/23/revealed-how-rifaat-al-assad-brutally-plundered-syria-and-spent-millions-of-black-cash-on-property-yachts-and-a-plane-while-setting-up-businesses-on-spains-costa-del-sol/

GUERNSEY AND GINETTE LOUISE BLONDEL

1. 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.
2. With a master’s in corporate governance and membership of the Chartered Governance Institute, the industry body for company secretaries, Blondel was an established figure in Guernsey’s offshore finance industry. 
3. Originally employed as a personal assistant for her client's son, 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.
4. In one instance, her personal bank account was used to distribute €1m to third parties on her client’s behalf.
5. the Guernsey Financial Services notice does not name Blondel’s employer, simply referring to them as “Client 1”.  
1. However, the case details and evidence gathered by international prosecutors indicate that Client 1 was Rifaat al-Assad.
6. Details in the notice of sanctions against Blondel, the Guernsey adviser, indicate Rifaat was her client. He is described as being
1. “An alleged war criminal and kleptocrat” who, in June 2020, was “convicted of money laundering and aggravated tax fraud in a European court and sentenced to four years in prison”.

GINETTE LOUISE BLONDEL FINED IN GUERNSEY.

1. In January 2013, Blondel left her job at a trust management firm, where Client 1’s business had dominated 99% of her time and branched out on her own, according to the regulator.
2. The client’s son employed her as a personal assistant. A year later, in March 2014, she signed up as a consultant to advise on business and administration, helping manage Client 1’s financial activities.
3. She worked for them for seven years until 2020.
4. According to the Guernsey regulator,
1. The client – Rifaat – was first investigated for money laundering in 2012 and
2. Blondel knew this when she started working for him.
5. The regulator found she breached local laws by managing trusts when only regulated companies can do such work.
6. She held 11 simultaneous directorships, breached a maximum cap of eight, and failed to conduct formal money laundering risk assessments.
7. In 2015, €1m of funds were transferred into her personal bank account after an attempt to set up a corporate structure fell through. Blondel then used the funds to make over 150 payments to third parties on her client’s behalf.
8. the regulator said.
1. “The commission considers these payments led to a very real risk that Ms Blondel may have been used to launder the proceeds of crime, a risk which Ms Blondel has consistently failed to recognise”.
9. Blondel has yet to respond to an invitation to comment.

NO FURTHER SANCTIONS

1. Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said:-
1. Prosecutions against advisers were essential to serve as a deterrent.
2. “If countries like the UK and its crown dependencies … are only prepared to use regulatory measures such as fines and disqualification, they cannot hope to deter dirty money washing through their financial systems fully”.  
3. However, the Guernsey regulator does not bring criminal charges, and Blondel appears to be facing no further sanctions.
2. A spokesperson for the STATES OF GUERNSEY insisted the jurisdiction treated money laundering offences extremely seriously. The spokesperson said.
1. “In this specific case, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission – the local regulator – took serious action against this individual, handing down a huge fine and a ban from working in the industry,”
2. “However, as people working in the law enforcement sector are well aware, the evidential threshold for a criminal prosecution and the threshold for a regulator to take action are very different.”
3. “As in all criminal matters, an alleged offence must be proven to a high criminal standard for any successful prosecution.”
4. “Where, following a full investigation, there is insufficient evidence to proceed, a case will be closed.”
3. A spokesperson for the Guernsey Financial Services Commission said:
1. “The Guernsey Financial Services Commission takes tackling financial crime seriously.”

SOURCE

• https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2024-12-16/butcher-of-hama-assads-uncle-used-guernsey-fund-manager-to-stash-millions-looted-from-syria/
• https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2024-12-16/guernsey-financial-adviser-helped-hide-millions-for-butcher-of-hama
• Ms Ginette Louise Blondel - GFSC. https://www.gfsc.gg/news/ms-ginette-louise-blondel.
• Ms Ginette Louise Blondel — GFSC - FCC Times. https://www.fcctimes.com/2024/03/06/ms-ginette-louise-blondel/.
• https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2020/09/23/revealed-how-rifaat-al-assad-brutally-plundered-syria-and-spent-millions-of-black-cash-on-property-yachts-and-a-plane-while-setting-up-businesses-on-spains-costa-del-sol/  
• https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2024-03-13/guernsey-financial-consultant-knowingly-worked-for-alleged-war-criminal