A lot to the countrys fortunes we bring you the stories and developments that dramatically changing the world we live in get a break sit down that was a slogan that whatever the problem is that Boris Johnson counting the cost on aljazeera. Hes been fighting those hes called the terrorists now syrias president is turning on his closest produce Bashar Al Assad is complicating the assets of the billionaire rami marcos he just happens to be his cousin so what is exactly triggered this now after 9 years of war if theres inside story. Hello im come all santamaria in a circle of syrias president Bashar Al Assad has always been tight any disputes within the ruling family were kept strictly behind closed doors until recently there was a rift between the president s cousin rami mcclure found the Syrian Government and it is very public battle for as long been considered untouchable but now he is accused of owing millions of dollars in back taxes to the state and indication the tycoon is being isolated from the base of power but in an unprecedented move and youre seeing it here michael of posted his views on social media he accused the government officials directly of trying to take over his Telecommunications Company and of arresting his employees michael of city one step down from syria tell one of the countrys biggest firms but hes already been barred from traveling and his assets have also been seized. How to handle i want to step down if i resign i would be filming the company in the country at the height of the war i did not abandon my country my president or my folks to do it now so lets tell you a little bit more about rummy move now before syrias war its already controlled up to 60 percent of the economy and almost every important sector of it apart from syria tell his Business Empire includes real estate electricity tourism oil trading his fortune largely built from commissions paid to him by Business People which is why some people call him mr 5 percent hes become rich enough to build an independent power base but hes actually heavily financed assads military campaign during the war the billionaire has also been under u. S. Sanctions since 2008 for what washington calls public corruption and luckless not the only friend assad has turned against in recent months a dozen pro regime businessmen and been reportedly targeted in an Anticorruption Campaign launched by the president its not dissimilar to the Saudi Crown Prince is to your crackdown on the kingdoms Business Elite there are a number of theories circulating on why the syrian president is doing this some say its an effort to refill syrias coffers empty by nearly a decade of war the 1st lady. Is believed to want to play a leading role in driving in the economic recovery and others say its to do with russia assads ally who turned the tide of war in his favor corruption in syria has been criticized in Russian Media outlets which are associated with the president vladimir putin. So thats the back story and here is the panel to help us make sense of all of it in washington d. C. Is. The former syrian diplomat now a known resident fellow at the center for global policy. In moscow alexei macof a middle east specialist at the Russia InternationalAffairs Council and in Norman Oklahoma in the u. S. Its Joshua Landis director of the center for middle east studies at the university of oklahoma and the editor of the syria comment gentlemen thank you for joining us for inside story bottom of the quote to start us off from robert ford who is a former u. S. Ambassador to syria who once said of Rami Makhlouf frankly if he wasnt part of the family hed probably be dead. But in bondi hes an extraordinary interesting figure isnt he running amok with so much power and then things just turned so quickly look around me where the people who say that he is the most fish person in syria blah blah blah rami is just running assad family money so hes just syrian employee with a so far this would have been this way so way and medical media report mentioned that he on 6 percent oxygen economy basically what they reality is that bashar owns 60 percent and romney just running that show for. The other the former Prime Minister say to listen to that when the government of syria try to fix the contract between syria and if you dont govern that so their government get more revenue but. Theyre certainly interfere and say this isnt work and keep like give it as it is so to put their army context in this year in a crisis we have to understand the sense of sort of syria we have russia with its the ritual power at the Security Council at military base and we have iran which is has a project of. A persian empire in the middle is as you have assured who is the center for theres 2 projects of pressure iranian in syria and the power of bashar based on that he has the army has loyalist and he has the support of the people the support is coming from run in debt. Ronnie was financing as i reports at mission financing. The civilian part of the war. Plus the military one thats right the mission himself but i mean the job was its to keep constituents supporting bashar by providing services it looks like chris and the thats romney the group is his role if you want to be more than the financier of that you want to have military role each time shes on the ship then he tried to have political road here has stepped relation with russia his father and his brother are in russia and to his body and iran presumably that is that is problematic as you know if he is if he is got this business power hes been given this business power thats one thing president assad can sort of keep him it at arms length of he has to but if he wants military power a political power that seemingly is going to be different now hes becoming showing himself as a potential alternative for a set of tension kingmakers in syria you know this kind of stuff and thats not acceptable by such family so here they people say his friend to bashar brother matt had a son and so forth i dont buy that the center of the power is and thats family and they want to state and anyone can overlap with them they just eliminated and thats exactly what happens with rami so yesterday they just a block his Facebook Page in order to look in from the war how far that goes around up and frankly what is relevant today that we see a fracture within to. Wiesel the fact that assad who is cousin is i can see some great syria yesterday they just saying that we have to play a role to play in syria this is never happened in the 8 years which shows how much bashar become weaker just still the strongest within syria and equation stalled out of articles of clothing that doesnt mean is the strongest anymore whether you see it that within his family within this community he would start to challenging him open the. That shows how weak is he now look i dont think many boys lets pause about some cause i want to stop bringing joshua and alexei into this is well Joshua Landis ill start with you in a home of. A bus and made the point that the tried to sort of quiet and run me down now for shutting down his Facebook Page i mean the fact that he went public like that in the 1st place i found quite interesting to go and make these public facebook posts and publicly decry whats happening to him knowing what could happen as a result i agree with much that the same said but i dont think this is a real sign of bashar as a weakness i think bashar is consolidating his power after a successful you know civil war was successful as for the wrong war but hes ended up on top of the heap and hes trying to read gather the reigns of power into his hands and as we know during this terribly brutal civil war centralized power was decentralized lots of little militias so forth around the country and what hes doing now is hes gathering those reins back in his hands hes consolidating power and one of the things he wanted to do was clip the wings of his cousin who had become too big for his britches and weve seen this time and time again as there were there was a sort of back and forth and ramming mouth loof has gone on to pretend to be a muslim a shape hes rude he refers to god all the time hes trying to undermine the president and keep the economic power his hands and bashar is not going to let him do that i dont see this as a real sign of weakness of course its making many people question whats going on because theres to ing and fro ing but i think this is the inevitable process of reconsolidation of power at the end of a civil very bloody and long civil so this is the thing both you and but some have made the point about the power he where as a stencil player at least on the cover of it all its about these back taxes of 185000000. 00 that romney owes i mean 180 5000000. 00 in the grand scheme of things hes. Not much really is is. You know its about whos in control and weve seen this you know all of these middle eastern regimes most of them are very personal list dick regimes whether its mohamed bin said a man in saudi arabia as you referred to who who arrested many members of his family turn them upside down and shook them out for money and he was sending a message to all the elite in saudi arabia im in control and that was the major message this was not about law and order this was not about rebuilding institutions perhaps to a certain degree but its about power and thats what Bashar Arshad is indicating today and he has he has isolated ramey maloof even his other brothers who are in intelligence have separated themselves from around him whove and hes isolated and hes going to have his wings clipped and and the syrian system is perhaps going to stay much as it is today it has change so little under bashar its the same system that the father established and now bashar is continuing on weve seen so little change in the basic structure of syrian power over the last 50 years and thats why the Syrian People are very upset they want change they want reform and this does not give it. And so alexy of in moscow can you fit rusher into this narrative for me this particular narrative about that on the market because if you were saying its not really about money but there is this narrative that well russia has been bankrolling the syrian war for some years now or at least serious side of it and it actually wants a bit of payback well certainly it might have some you know it might resonate in the hearts and minds of some experts Decision Makers but generally it argues that the all of the more school cares about the you know the rest of the stability of the its not necessarily to the personality but personality of awesome as it embodied meant of the regime thats. What is important and of course in order to keep the regime functioning the state institutions functioning Army Social Services everything you need as. Rightly mentioned reconciliation or even though its a different day sion for the mounted state of righteous which has been going through this process a lot of years so thats definitely the case so theres theres an issue i mentioned it in the introduction an issue with Russian Media perhaps criticizing levels of corruption in syria is that the broader issue here that they want the syrians to be seen to be going after that so its not just russia supporting and throwing money towards a regime that that does what it wants well in the 1st place again dont forget that its not the 1st time russia views critically. Things went bad happen in syria is just you know another coincidence and maybe in the blown out of proportion but russia tries to send a certain message to to damascus just recall what russia has been doing for the last weeks and months sending a. An assistant in terms of lead rein because series currently running out of the talks of its or we were so i mean thats why women should argue that russia is changing its kind of mindset which has been here in place for the last 9 years of the war but somehow does that affect syria and i know that all that the Syrian Government should be more specific about because as joshua pointed out this war is pretty much over but you will still have a very important syrian russian relationship going for the new you mention that in your early onset it is so much complicated issue now its not the more syrian war its not the no more syrian issue its Regional International issues. That stayed jeffrey thats us it war to syria to come to a schoolteacher a mission 2 weeks ago or openly frankly that it was an action that we dont have to just in syria we need we would withdraw our forces about syria and you keep your forces be have no interest to so they are sending a message to russia that we dont have we are not going to getting with you and see if we want you to help us to have a political solution where we have political transition through geneva process will enable that process. I disagree with george bush in that says that if he is much weaker than before i mean when you have to go to the. Challenge him and politely this but in this way challenge him politely that i will not. Give you the company my feelings my understanding that. Really the conflict between the 2 is not about the money as you mention that when its a 1000000. 00 or 200000000000. 00 is not in karate that know where they are talking to his son mention he said robbie sons mission that we have to be and all of that is now i believe that the real problem is already a conflict is number one there i mean its become much challenging to bashar. Number 2 i think the conflict is about the money of overseas money inside syria we are talking about 100000000000. 00 dont forget that this money accumulated from 80. 85 since his father ran his father take that become defined as the family so executive for the last 50 years and god knows only how much money we are talking about most of this money are russia to buy europe destroying europe or whatever so i believe that that and the conflict between iranian bashar didnt start yesterday and start for the last year as we just reach today where we see its the trees to defeat that they didnt consider day their positions whereas for them when we talk about syrian state i dont believe there is we do have students that not now not even before the war we have to shut the system we actually the system and we have the system so openly we talk about the government as Government International recognition of the government it has minister is it has Services Requests it does is it so on but we do have a shadow government which is the regime which is the intelligence the Army Officers who shape syria the way that to see it in controlling city and they use the government to do that and thats we always criticize the u. N. For example that you and you are giving the money for the government but basically the regime using that the money to support his own lawyer at that so it doesnt go to the people rather than to go and. Support to us that you see the difference between the government as a government which i belong to the government told a syrian what the government and the regime when he told the regime that they would do whatever they can to the source or to the u. S. Ok that will certainly but that was let me put that to joshua then because just painting a slightly different picture than the one you did off the level of power that assad has or at least maybe the way things have or havent changed under him. You know i dont see this as as a sign of that weakness because romney is challenging the president the president is challenging ramey romney has been doing what hes been doing all along and i think the president has indicated his own happiness but its now that the war is over but he feels like he can get he can afford to get into this tangle with his cousin who is extremely important in the economy and and thats you know this is the president taking it to his cousin its not the other way around the cousin has no power he doesnt have any forces he doesnt have email to hes only got facebook and now we shut that off the guy does not have any resources yes he has money outside the country 100000000000 is it is i think fantasy we have no clue how much money he has out of the money out of the country and out of the its considerable this is about money it is about power money syria is in desperate straits the president needs to rebuild the country he needs to show the Syrian People that there is going to be a peace dividend that life is going to get better and right now life is getting worse for every syrian the inflation which threatens to become hyperinflation has been devastating to everybody they cant go to the marketplace and buy tomatoes or buy lamb it is a bad situation in lebanon the collapse the lebanese Banking System has just really ripped syria park at a time when the president was hoping that there would be some money coming into the country money is flowing out and that is very difficult and he needs to find money wherever he can and to send a message to the syrian elite you have to pony up and were going to rebuild and they say whats your take well i think as usual its somewhere in the middle and actually. I agree with with my colleagues this in the 1st place. I do it with joy sure that basically the regime has become even more. Assured about more confidence in its itself after its majority of its military victories which were basically things to russia and run back in and now its and another attempt to consolidate the domestic scene and basically Chicken Salad days and different demands they nomic environment economic space in order to also send a signal because its in the middle east thats seen them images matter a lot and here its not the exclusion on the other hand certainly i mean i do have some that there is some. Weakness not necessarily in us its but in terms of the overall. Situation with syria the common but the issue here is that i sort of won one but basically managed to keep the country. In control not thanks to his economy and basically economy doesnt equal i mean a bad economy doesnt equal his successes or arnotts its basically thanks to his ability to manipulate its his partners russia iran and play on differences between them so and if were talking about the current Economic Situation now i think its more relevant as to what george will mention is to the that he needs to centers around signal to his domestic constituencies that the war is over and we need to rebuild the country economically because everyone is silent with economic devastation with a. Desperate situation. In the ordinary life on the wrists citizens right and i believe its not a signal and. This sends i consider it nobly thats resembles what nonsense man made in saudi arabia yeah a couple of years ago basically also sending a strong signal not only outward but made in the truth is the mastic what its yeah her mind it to them isnt it theres one more piece of the puzzle gentlemen that i want to fit in here and that is. The 1st lady of syria i just mentioned her in pa thing in the intro this idea that she wants to dolls have influence over the economy and quite a lot of power they just showed you want to pick up on that one for me well yes i mean people i think ive been making too much of this struggle between the mouth flew family and us most family undoubtedly there is constant struggle among different members of the family who might have petty jeddah jealousies and so forth and you know once the president makes a citizen to bring down his nephew who is a major figure in the economy and has been the a fixer for the economy. Everybody all the other members of the family stand to gain so theyre going to immediately start maneuvering to pick up whatever pieces they can theres going to be a redistribution of economic power within the media family of the president so that you know the the hawks the eagles are circling theres no doubt about it trying to get portions of this large economic empire but i dont see this is a major you know he has some people in the opposition have been trying to paint this as the regime is on its last legs its going to collapse in order to encourage the United States and europe not to engage with assad to encourage the other arab states not to engage not to take them seriously and to continue to put maximum pressure as they are doing on iran in order to bring down the Syrian Regime i think that effort is a pipe dream thats the effort that state the policy of the United States is pursuing and jefferies is pursuing i dont think its going to be so. Sessile ok this is not a repayment about to collapse but some of them a little bit of time left to leave the final word with you a former syrian diplomat himself in other country well you know i tell you something about john kerry when he was senator for the nation he made with us at this in a meeting east when the political it when he told us of the difference between you and your father your father never by you will never tell the truth and if you dont do it if you dont change the way he was trust you. I said then try to visit syria when syria was in peace before 2011 if you go 20 kilometers away from damascus the capital there is no electricity theres no roads theres nor sewage water so to talk that said not want to be in that country he didnt build that country when he had the money its the ability when we talk about grammy robbie and thats what hes going to really the heart of that community because i said mobilize the Community Survival that i would protect you from the other extremists in the here and there but the reality went to war to stop that people start to ask why we separate 500000 pallets community 1000000 in order that you to stay in power and now we see how much money you have you and romney and so i dont i disagree with both of them you with that said he is strong i think is much weakened and in the eyes of his constituents and he now everybody is asking him for the prize or thats war and he cannot afford number one number 2 he doesnt want to use his money this is the issue and so when the election and your money came to syria they say i need a loan and the credit line i dont have the money now we figured that rummy himself if we also dont have the finance with the family he has 1000000000 of the money is there i want to know how big or not. Contradiction this is whether we this is this is the tree into society this is this week the cracks that thats was the crisis or to thank you Paul Simon Yvonne and. Me im going to bandy about some vitamin d. There in washington Alexei Klebnikov in moscow josh. And as in Norman Oklahoma thank you to all of you and thank you for watching wherever you are around the world and to keep in touch with us online our home pages in the shows section at aljazeera dot com were also on Facebook Facebook dot com forward slash a j inside story on twitter at a. J. Inside story and at kemal a. J. If you want to message me directly im Kemal Santa Maria from the whole inside story thanks for joining us and well see you again soon. Water scarcity has become a major global issue the demand is going straight up and the supply is going straight down turning an essential Natural Resource into a commodity traded for profit just because lawyers mean. 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