The company, Matchworld Group SA, was promoted as possessing the expertise, capabilities, and tools of innovation and artificial intelligence to restore “Syria’s presence on the regional and international stage,” as stated in the announcement. It was expected to “support the marketing of Syrian sports tournaments and activities, and organize international matches and professional training camps.”

However, documents reviewed by the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ) reveal that the company’s regional director, who is also responsible for the Middle East, as stated on his personal social media accounts, had been convicted, on October 4, 2023, of the felony of “abuse of entrusted public funds.” He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined the equivalent of $50,000 for previous sports investments in Syria made under another company.

MoU and the New Syrian Government

Commitment to implementing memoranda of understanding signed with the government has become a topic of public debate among Syrians. Although an MoU is not legally binding, according to lawyer Saeed Manna, the new government began signing MoUs and agreements after the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024, paving the way for contracts with Arab, regional, and international companies.

Government representation in these agreements varied by sector, with relevant ministries and institutions acting as counterparts. The MoU signed between the Ministry of Sports and Matchworld Group falls within this framework.

This MoU is part of a broader, high-level government effort to attract foreign investment to a country whose economy has been devastated by 14 years of war. Around 50 agreements and MoUs were signed in 2025 to strengthen infrastructure through projects in aviation, ports, bridges, and energy, as well as to improve essential services. These agreements also covered vital sectors such as sports, healthcare, education, agriculture, and humanitarian relief.

However, questions arise regarding the seriousness of these MoUs and their potential to translate into actual projects, particularly given the lack of a clear distinction between a “memorandum of understanding” and a “contract,” especially with respect to rights and obligations, which creates confusion around these initiatives.

Economic expert Dr. Karam Shaar explains that “the difference between an MoU and a contract is often highly ambiguous,” noting that contracts can sometimes be written in vague language similar to MoUs, allowing parties to evade obligations later. Conversely, MoUs may include stricter clauses defining conditions for withdrawal without legal consequences.

Nevertheless, this does not absolve government entities from conducting due diligence on companies entering into agreements, according to economic expert Hayyan Hababeh. This raises a critical question: How was an MoU signed with a company regionally represented by an individual convicted by Syrian courts of abuse of entrusted public funds, especially since such MoUs are expected to lead to formal contracts governed by Law No. 51 of 2004, which stipulates in Article 11/4 that contractors with government entities must not have been convicted of a felony or dishonorable crime unless rehabilitated?

Who is Matchworld Group SA?

On July 3, 2025, the Syrian Ministry of Sports and Youth announced via its official Facebook page that it had signed what it described as a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Matchworld Group during an official visit by Minister Mohammad Al-Hamid to Qatar.

According to the announcement, the company is “one of the leading global entities in sports marketing, providing advanced consultancy in sports management and innovation,” and will support Syrian sports marketing, organize international matches and professional camps, and introduce artificial intelligence tools to enhance performance and decision-making.

The MoU includes provisions for developing sports management, modernizing administrative structures, adopting technological solutions, and integrating AI-based performance analysis tools.

Despite these claims, open-source research conducted by SIRAJ, including sports news platforms and international football association websites, found no evidence of prior partnerships, contracts, or notable activities carried out by Matchworld Group SA.

Mentions of the company were largely limited to its own website, which references a partnership signed in April 2024 with a Saudi sports consultancy firm, along with older images of training camps in Switzerland and ticketing services for select events.

Furthermore, a document from the Swiss commercial registry shows that Matchworld Group SA was established on January 31, 2007, and underwent several administrative changes before reaching its current structure on July 6, 2020.

Records also reveal that another company, Matchworld Football SA, part of the same group and specializing in football, was declared bankrupt in the Swiss canton of Vaud on April 2, 2019, before the bankruptcy was lifted on May 24, 2019.

“Background checks should have been conducted on any entity signing MoUs with the Syrian government, but this did not happen, as the state is newly formed and lacks sufficient databases on such companies,” says economic researcher Hayyan Hababeh.

He adds that globally, not all MoUs are expected to materialize into actual projects, but implementing even 30–40% of them could positively impact Syria’s economy.

Economic consultant Osama Al-Qadi notes that an MoU is “closer to a declaration of intent, often non-binding and lacking clear implementation details.” However, cooperation agreements may require investors to submit documentation, clarify project details, and provide company profiles within a specified timeframe; otherwise, the MoU could be considered void.

It remains unclear whether the MoU signed with the Ministry involves any financial commitments or projected expenditures, as the Ministry declined to provide SIRAJ with a copy of the document despite formal requests from the investigation team.

Misuse of Public Funds

In June 2023, Mazen Haj Khalil, a Palestinian-Syrian-Russian businessman since 2016, joined Matchworld Group SA as a partner and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also appeared in the same capacity at the Sports Investment Forum held in Riyadh in April of the previous year, during the signing of a partnership with a Saudi sports consultancy firm.

However, Haj Khalil is not new to sports investments in Syria. His name appears in documents issued by the General Sports Federation.

According to a document dated June 2, 2012, Major General Mowaffaq Jomaa, then-head of the Federation, requested that Haj Khalil, then-head of the “Smart Sport” company, appoint an arbitrator to resolve a dispute arising from his company’s failure to fulfill financial obligations amounting to $50,000, plus late payment interest.

The contract had granted his company rights to sponsorship, marketing, advertising, and television broadcasting for the 2011 Asian Cup qualifiers in Doha.

A lawsuit filed on July 23, 2012, states that Haj Khalil collected substantial revenues from the investment contract but left the country without fulfilling his obligations.

Subsequently, on June 24, 2013, the Federation’s lawyer was instructed to file a lawsuit demanding repayment of $50,000 plus 9% legal interest.

Under Judicial Decision No. 353 (Case No. 476), issued on June 4, 2014, Haj Khalil was charged with the felony of embezzlement of public funds under Article 8 of Economic Crimes Law No. 3 of 2013, which stipulates a minimum prison sentence of 5 years for such offenses.

On June 30, 2015, the Third Criminal Court sentenced him to five years in prison, fined him $50,000 (or equivalent in Syrian pounds), stripped him of civil rights, and imposed legal guardianship, while waiving residency restrictions.

A Decade in the Courtrooms

After the initial ruling was issued against him, Mazen Haj Khalil filed an appeal, which was accepted. One document indicates that by the end of 2017, the appeal he had submitted against the 2014 indictment had been formally approved.

Eight years later, on June 22, 2022, Judge Mohammad Jassem Al-Abdullah, the First Referral Judge in Damascus, issued Decision No. 300, charging Haj Khalil with the felony of “abuse of entrusted public funds” under Article 8 of Law No. 3 of 2013. The decision also ordered the issuance of arrest and transfer warrants against him and required him to bear all legal fees and court expenses.

On October 4, 2023, the Damascus Criminal Court issued a final in absentia ruling against Haj Khalil under Decision No. 406, convicting him of the felony of abuse of entrusted public funds and sentencing him to five years in prison, along with a $50,000 fine.

Ties and Cooperation with Firas Mualla

Furthermore, Mazen Haj Khalil maintained a relationship with Syrian swimmer Firas Mualla, son of Major General Hashem Mualla, former commander of the Special Units Battalion, which was responsible for the massacre in the Al-Masharqa neighborhood of Aleppo in the 1980s, according to reports by the Syrian Human Rights Committee.

Firas Mualla later held several prominent positions in Syrian sports, most notably as President of the General Sports Federation and the Syrian Olympic Committee, succeeding Major General Mowaffaq Jomaa in 2020.

According to a Facebook post by Mualla dated September 20, 2018, Haj Khalil was responsible for organizing all administrative and logistical arrangements for Mualla’s participation in the Russian Federation Open Water Swimming Championship (Masters category), held on the Black Sea coast in the city of Anapa in 2018.

The team also included Majd Shehadeh, son of Brigadier Moeen Shehadeh, who headed the unit responsible for the protection and escort of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photos shared by Mualla show Haj Khalil, Mualla, and Shehadeh together on the winners’ podium.

In one of his posts, Mualla described Haj Khalil as a “brother and friend,” praising his support, encouragement, and role in facilitating “all organizational and administrative procedures in the Russian Federation” for the European-level participation.

On October 6, 2018, the Facebook page “Tartous, the Beating Heart of Syria” published a photo taken by Majd Shehadeh during a ceremony in which Murat Kumpilov, Head of the Republic of Adygea, honored Firas Mualla and his accompanying team during the republic’s annual celebrations in the capital, Maykop.

The team also included Majd Shehadeh, son of Brigadier Moeen Shehadeh, who headed the unit responsible for the protection and escort of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photos shared by Mualla show Haj Khalil, Mualla, and Shehadeh together on the winners’ podium.

In one of his posts, Mualla described Haj Khalil as a “brother and friend,” praising his support, encouragement, and role in facilitating “all organizational and administrative procedures in the Russian Federation” for the European-level participation.

On October 6, 2018, the Facebook page “Tartous, the Beating Heart of Syria” published a photo taken by Majd Shehadeh during a ceremony in which Murat Kumpilov, Head of the Republic of Adygea, honored Firas Mualla and his accompanying team during the republic’s annual celebrations in the capital, Maykop.

Haj Khalil also shared several photos on his Facebook account on September 8, 2018, showing himself alongside Mualla and Shehadeh on a winners’ podium.

Unanswered Questions

It remains unclear whether the Ministry of Sports and Youth or the Swiss parent company, Matchworld Group SA, was aware of Mazen Haj Khalil’s criminal record and his ties to figures associated with the Assad regime prior to signing the Memorandum of Understanding.

Neither party responded to journalists’ inquiries regarding this matter or the fate of the MoU months after its signing.

Additionally, no response was received from the company’s regional director, Mazen Haj Khalil, to questions sent via email on December 26, 2025

• Haneen Omran contributed to this investigation.
• An Arabic version was published on Daraj and in the Syrian newspaper Al-Mawqif Al-Riyadi.

The post “Deal in the Shadow”: MoU between Syria’s Ministry of Sports and Youth and a Company Linked to a Person Convicted of “Abuse of entrusted public funds” appeared first on SIRAJ.

His work, described as “close to suicide,” was nevertheless in high demand. Exchanging foreign currency through official channels rarely reflected its real value on the parallel market. Most people holding foreign currencies, particularly dollars and euros, who wished to sell or even buy them turned to the parallel market to avoid suspicion, especially after several laws criminalized first the trading of dollars and later even their possession.

Despite the heavy security pressure and the regime’s attempts to criminalize dealings in foreign currency, the driver did not know that the passenger who had entered his car was an informant working with Military Intelligence Branch 251 (the Al-Khatib branch).

During the exchange, the informant took a photo of the agent inside the car and sent it to his superior in the branch via WhatsApp. A screenshot of that message later appeared in an official document signed by the head of Branch 251 and addressed to Department 40 on 29 November 2023, ordering the immediate arrest of the transfer agent, his handover to a police department, and the confiscation of the phones in his possession “with utmost urgency for the purpose of investigation.”

This currency exchange agent was not the only one arrested. The former Syrian regime deployed all available tools to track down and detain anyone dealing in foreign currencies, whether exchanging them or, later on, merely possessing them after issuing a series of laws aimed at centralizing control over hard currency in Assad’s hands.

Economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi says that all the measures taken by the Assad regime were designed to extort anyone holding dollars or other foreign currencies, forcing them into two choices: either exchange their money through the regime at the rate it dictated, or face legal prosecution. He notes that these laws had little to do with economic policy and were instead intended to extract funds to sustain military operations and pursue victory.

As part of the “Damascus Dossier” project, the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ reviewed digital copies of numerous documents showing how the Assad regime used its intelligence agencies to track and arrest anyone dealing in U.S. dollars or other foreign currencies following Decree No. 3 of 2020, issued by the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which criminalized transactions in any currency other than the Syrian pound.

The “Damascus Dossier” is a collaborative investigative project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in partnership with the German public broadcaster NDR. It brings together journalists from around the world to uncover disturbing new details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, and 126 journalists from 24 media organizations across 20 countries spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing these documents, consulting experts, and interviewing Syrian families still searching for loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

The Damascus Dossier investigations reveal the inner workings of Assad’s security apparatus and its links to foreign governments and international organizations. The leak consists of more than 134,000 files, mostly written in Arabic, amounting to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

The documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence and General Intelligence Directorates.

Both agencies have been subject to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The documents include internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence revealing the day-to-day operations of Assad’s surveillance and arrest network, as well as its coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and communications with United Nations agencies operating inside Syria.

The highly sensitive database also contains the names of numerous former Syrian intelligence officers.

Recruiting Informants to Seize the “Dollar”

In a document dated 16 December 2023, the head of the Military Intelligence Branch 251 ordered Department 40 (Al-Khatib Branch) to arrest three money transfer agents operating in different areas of Damascus on charges of dealing in foreign currencies.

The document includes detailed information about the locations where the agents worked and businesses they used as cover to provide money transfers, as well as photographs secretly taken by intelligence officers during currency exchange operations. It also contains personal details such as phone numbers and other identifying information.

As in the previous document, the branch chief attached screenshots that appear to have been sent directly by the officers responsible for surveillance and reporting during the operation.

These operations were not only aimed at enforcing decrees and laws issued by the regime’s authorities. According to economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi, they also served a much broader economic objective: monopolizing foreign currencies in the country and redirecting them to sources close to the regime and individuals within Assad’s inner circle.

After Assad banned trading in U.S. dollars and other foreign currencies, Syrians began using coded language to refer to the dollar in personal conversations and over the phone. They used nicknames such as “the forbidden one,” “parsley,” “the green,” or “number one.”

However, this strategy did not escape the Syrian intelligence services under Assad. One intelligence document summarizing surveillance of specific phone numbers indicates that Syrian intelligence identified a man in Sweida province as dealing in U.S. dollars after he asked about the price of “number one,” a coded reference to the dollar during what appeared to be a wiretapped phone conversation.

Criminalizing the Trade and Possession of Foreign Currency

Possessing foreign currency, especially U.S. dollars, had long been considered taboo in Syria. Even carrying $100 in one’s pocket could expose a Syrian to questioning, as holding such currency was considered illegal.

As a result, working in currency exchange outside the control of the Syrian regime was widely viewed as a “suicidal profession” because of the extreme risks involved, particularly in recent years, when the regime’s need to extract additional funds intensified.

Trading in the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies was first officially banned in Syrian markets in 1986, through Law No. 24 of 1986, issued under Hafez al-Assad. The law criminalized buying or selling foreign currencies outside licensed banks and exchange companies, as well as possessing large amounts of dollars without authorization. Violators faced prison sentences and financial penalties. This law laid the foundation for the criminalization of foreign currency trading in the local market.

Law No. 24 remained in effect until 2013, when Bashar al-Assad, two years after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, issued Law No. 29 of 2013, titled “Combating Illegal Dealings in Foreign Currencies.” The law criminalized trading foreign currencies outside official channels, including licensed banks and exchange companies.

It also criminalized buying or selling dollars or other foreign currencies on the parallel market, as well as transferring money or speculating on exchange rates. Notably, the law imposed harsher penalties, including prison sentences ranging from three to ten years, depending on the severity of the offense, in addition to substantial fines.

In 2020, the Syrian pound experienced a sharp collapse. For the first time in its history, the exchange rate reached 1,000 Syrian pounds per U.S. dollar in January 2020, and by the end of that year, the dollar had risen to approximately 3,000 Syrian pounds.

This collapse prompted Assad, on 4 October 2020, to claim that the fundamental reason for the pound’s decline was the freezing of billions of dollars in deposits belonging to Syrians in Lebanese banks following Lebanon’s banking crisis in 2019.

During a visit to the “Producers 2020” exhibition, Assad stated that between $20 billion and $42 billion of these deposits may have been lost in the Lebanese banking sector, describing the figure as “terrifying” for Syria’s economy. He added: “They took the money and placed it in Lebanon, and we paid the price.”

Yet this statement was not Assad’s only response. Earlier that same year, he had already tightened restrictions on Syrians holding foreign currencies through Decree No. 3 of 2020. For the first time, the decree explicitly used the phrase “prohibition of possessing foreign currencies.”

Article 1 of the decree states that “it is prohibited to deal in any currency other than the Syrian pound as a means of payment or for any type of commercial transaction.” The decree significantly increased penalties and introduced legal provisions allowing authorities to confiscate foreign currencies involved in such transactions.

Dominating Hard Currency

It appears that the Syrian regime’s aim behind these laws was not to regulate the flow of currency in the market, nor even to protect the Syrian pound, but rather to secure Assad’s share of every dollar entering Syria, according to economic researcher al-Turkawi.

“The purpose of all these laws was to centralize the sale of dollars through the Central Bank. The regime wanted all foreign currency transactions to take place through the Central Bank for three main objectives.”

The first objective, according to al-Turkawi, was the collapse of the Syrian pound, which had effectively become unacceptable for international trade, as foreign suppliers increasingly demanded payment exclusively in U.S. dollars. This made it difficult for the regime to finance the army or settle payments to Russia or Iran without dollars, as well as to pay for essential imports such as food supplies.

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad

The post “‘The Green’ in Assad’s Hand”.. How the Syrian Regime Recruited Informants to Trap Those Dealing in U.S. Dollars appeared first on SIRAJ.

Credit: SIRAJ Chemicals used to make Captagon found inside an abandoned drug production facility in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria.

Fighters from the new Syrian government forces uncover Captagon pills hidden inside an electrical power adapter in a facility used to produce Captagon under the previous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria.

Credit: Screenshot of a Facebook post by Syria’s Ministry of the Interior Syria’s Ministry of the Interior announced a Captagon seizure in Al Nabak, Syria, on June 27, 2025.

Credit: Ali Al Ibrahim/SIRAJ, Fighters from the new Syrian government forces inside a Captagon production facility in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria.

Credit: Lebanese Army, Lebanese authorities dismantled a clandestine Captagon lab in Hermel, near the Syrian border, after seizing a truck in May 2025 loaded with drug-making equipment.

The post Captagon Drug Networks Adapt and Survive in Middle East After Assad’s Fall appeared first on SIRAJ.

The post From the Steppes of Donbas to the Deserts of Syria appeared first on SIRAJ.

On a rainy Wednesday, last year in September, a 188-metre-long container ship came to the port of Antwerp. The fourteen-year-old ship named Shiba sails under the flag of Iran. It was given berths in the port of Antwerp in the Churchill Terminal and the ABES terminal of Katoen Natie. All by the book.

But a month earlier, the Shiba showed a very suspicious travel pattern when passing through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The ship departed Iran on 23 July, anchored in the Suez Canal on 9 August and arrived at its destination in Syria on 12 August. Between 2 and 5 August, it floated around seemingly aimlessly in the Gulf of Aden. Western security services had also noticed this, which see no logical, economic explanation for this. Every day of delay costs the shipowner money, so why all the delay?

In the same period, on August 3, the Yemeni Houthi rebels fired a missile at the Greek container ship Groton that was sailing in the Gulf of Aden at the time. To avoid such terror attacks and stay under the radar, Western ships switch off their automatic identification system (AIS) in that area. But the Houthi rebels are getting help from Iran for their attacks. The Iranian ship Shiba is suspected of having signaled the passing Western ship to the Houthis.

In January last year, a similar scenario took place. At that time, the Shiba was also hanging around there when the Houthis fired a missile at the dry bulk carrier Gibraltar Eagle on January 15.

And in March last year, it happened again, after the Shiba had left our country on February 25 and before the ship was back in Iran on March 13. In that interim period, the Shiba once again sailed through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, while the Houthis attacked the Propel Fortune with drones on March 8.

Such hidden Iranian aid to the Houthis is burning topical. In recent weeks, the rebels continued to target American targets, after which US President Donald Trump declared last week that he wants to eradicate the Houthis. Trump called on Iran to immediately stop all support to the rebels.

In addition to the Shiba, five other Iranian ships appear to have used their commercial traffic with the port of Antwerp as a cover for shady practices. The other ships are named Artam, Artenos, Azargoun, Daisy and Kashan. They are all large container ships that are 187 to more than 220 meters long and sail under the flag of Iran.

De Tijd started monitoring the shipping routes of the six suspected Iranian ships in September last year and mapped them on the basis of ship databases. We spoke with those involved in the ports and with security services in various countries. We also collected documents such as inspection reports and received help from fellow journalists from Syria in recent months (SIRAJ), Iran (Zamaneh), Germany (Paper Trail Media), Netherlands (Follow the Money) and the collectiveOCCRP. This research by De Tijd will therefore be published in English, Arabic and Farsi (the official language of Iran).

Weapons for Hezbollah

The shady practices of the Iranian ships do not appear to be limited to espionage for the benefit of the Houthis. According to Western and Israeli security services, they also made arms deliveries on their way to Antwerp at stopovers in Syria and Russia. It would mainly concern transports of parts to make weapons, rather than finished products, as well as of ammunition and dual-use goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. From Syria, the ammunition, weapons and parts would also have been transported to the radical Lebanese movement Hezbollah.

Our investigation into the traffic data confirms that the six Iranian ships have been going to Syria alternately and almost every month on their commercial route to Antwerp in recent years. This happened at least 27 times in 28 months (between June 2022 and October last year).

The six Iranian ships almost always followed the same route. That started after a long stay in Iran, often in Bandar Abbas, the country’s largest port controlled by the Iranian regime. From there, the ships set sail via the Suez Canal, usually without a stopover, to the main Syrian seaport in Latakia.

After one to three days in the Syrian port, the Iranian ships sailed on to Antwerp and other European ports in Italy (Ravenna), Spain (Valencia and Bilbao) and Romania (Constanta). The passage in Antwerp was often the last stop on the route and it usually took the longest. Then the ships returned to Iran.

What also makes the sailings suspicious: not all stopovers in Syria can be traced in the international shipping data on port visits and anchorages and berths, which the security services also use. We discovered at least one so-called dark port call, a stopover that has not been officially reported.

Our fellow journalists in Syria obtained confidential documents from the general intelligence service of the now fallen dictator Bashar al-Assad. They contain information about ships that came to Syrian ports between 2021 and 2024, including those from Latakia. Such a document shows that the Shiba visited the port of Latakia in May last year, which is not reflected in the official sailing records about that ship.

And the Iranian ships did not only make suspicious stopovers in Syria. On their way to Antwerp, the Azargoun and Artam also visited the Russian port of Novorossiysk. That happened in January and February 2023, about a year after Russia invaded Ukraine. In addition, the ship Artenos went to Venezuela in February and March 2023, also an alleged buyer of military systems from Iran. The ship also passed through Kenya and Tanzania, where Iran would also supply weapons.

Container numbers

The Belgian security services tried to catch the Iranian ships last year, De Tijd learned. This happened when the 207-metre-long container ship Azargoun entered the port of Antwerp on 30 June last year. Our security services had received exceptionally precise data from the Americans, even with the numbers of the containers in which the arms transports had taken place. But a thorough inspection, including of the crew’s cabins, found nothing at all. Not even remnants or any evidence that there were weapons or weapon parts on board before.

It illustrates how our security services have had to watch with dismay in recent years how the traffic to Antwerp was used for the anti-Western maneuvers of the Iranian regime. The alleged arms deliveries took place each time before the vessels behaved like legitimate merchant ships in European ports. When they came here to pick up goods, they were not even dual-use cargoes. So the ships have never been caught in Antwerp.

The issue was followed up by the Belgian Maritime Information Crossroads (MIK) and discussed with other countries in the North Sea and Channel Maritime Information Group (NSCMIG).

The Iranian ships also passed on information to Iran when they encountered military ships here. For example, the Daisy has already been spotted in Belgian waters when a military exercise with minehunters was underway.

Solemnly welcomed

Things may change. In March 2016, the Azargoun was the very first Iranian ship to be allowed to return to Antwerp after the EU had concluded a nuclear agreement with Iran and the sanctions had been lifted. The Azargoun was solemnly welcomed in the Deurganck dock by an official delegation led by the Antwerp port aldermen, eager to re-establish decades-old ties with Iran. Because until sanctions were introduced in 2010, Antwerp was the most important European destination for cargo from Iran.

Our investigation shows that the Azargoun came to the port of Antwerp seven times in the past three years and stopped six times in the Syrian port of Latakia along the way.

After a stop in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, the Azargoun was subjected to a purely technical inspection here in March 2023 at most. In the process, the inspectors discovered 37 defects, 16 of which were sufficiently heavy to hold the ship until everything was repaired. Among other things, the fire doors, fire extinguishing system and fire dampers were defective, the speed and distance indicator did not work, as did the oil filters and the emergency generator. But after 24 days, the Azargoun was released again and was able to continue its activities.

The crews of the Iranian ships also arouse suspicion. We learned that the ships are also accompanied by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who pretend to be different. “They do this to circumvent the sanctions and to spy in European ports,” it sounds. Our security services also heard this, but could not prove that the ships here had members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on board incognito.

The confidential Syrian documents that our colleagues in Damascus found in the former headquarters of Assad’s general intelligence service contain the names, nationalities, dates of birth, passport details and functions of the varying 27 to 28 crew members of the Iranian ships Azargoun, Daisy, Kashan and Shiba when they visited the Syrian port. In addition to a handful of Indians, the changing crews, ranging from the captain to the cook, appear to consist only of Iranians.

An initial screening of the lists of names shows that there are at least some remarkable profiles among them. In addition to many crew members who are linked to the Iranian state-owned shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), there are also those who are not known as seafarers at all but officially have completely different, non-shipping-related jobs. There is also an Iranian officer who has a track record as an investigator in the General Inspection Department of the Iranian Law Enforcement Force.

Katoen Natie: ‘As a terminal, we don’t choose the ship’

‘The terminal follow the regulations, we don’t choose the ship,” says Patrik Naenen, business unit manager at Katoen Natie’s ABES terminal that received the Iranian ship Shiba. ‘It is the port authority that determines which ships are admitted and it follows the rules imposed by Europe.’

‘So if a ship is sanctioned, it won’t come. If it is not sanctioned, it can be booked by a forwarder, who then assigns the ship to a terminal to do the loading and unloading operations. The forwarder makes contracts with the terminals in the ports, which determine the pricing, and on that basis he decides where to send a particular ship with its cargo. That choice will be determined by the price, but sometimes also by technical or nautical aspects, such as the draught.’

‘It is also important to understand that it is not because an Iranian ship is coming, that you are doing business with an Iranian company. The ship is only the vehicle, the cargo is another matter. Katoen Natie is clear about this: we will not work with an Iranian company to set up a certain export flow. This is something else: we just carry out an operation on behalf of a forwarder.’

‘As a terminal, you don’t necessarily have a view of the cargo. If it is bulk, it is of course loose goods and then you can see what goes on or off the ship, and there are also documents that state which category of goods it is, but we do not do the check, it is customs that checks the goods.’

The owner of the Churchill Terminal on the right bank of the port of Antwerp, where the six Iranian ships came most often, refused to answer our questions. The terminal with a total surface area of 27 hectares and 70,000 square meters of storage capacity is owned by the Belgian group Nova Natie. CEO Maarten Geerardyn: ‘We are absolutely not going to respond to that.’

Front company

Officially, the Iranian container ships are owned by the Iranian company Hafez Darya Arya Shipping (HDS). But that would only be a front company of the Iranian state shipping company IRISL, which is known for providing logistical support to the Iranian army. The sanctions against Iran have caused dozens of ‘independent private companies’ to emerge in the Iranian shipping industry, but in reality they still operate under the umbrella of IRISL and used to be integral departments of it.

IRISL had already been sanctioned by the US and on November 18 last year, the state-owned shipping company also ended up on the EU sanctions list. The Council of the EU then expanded its sanctions against Iran for its support – with missiles and drones – of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Neither IRISL nor HDS answered our questions, but a German shipping agent who has been working with HDS since 2018 did. The German agent sees no problems with this cooperation and emphasizes that he only acted for HDS, never for IRISL. ‘Because there were no sanctions against HDS in the EU – and there still are none today – we thought it safe to operate as a line agent and ship broker for HDS within the EU. We are not aware that IRISL is the ultimate owner of the ships.’

Nevertheless, the Germans have now suspended cooperation with HDS ‘purely as a precautionary measure’, because according to them the sanctions against IRISL are ‘broad and vaguely formulated’. The EU sanctioning of IRISL has therefore suspended the visits of the six Iranian ships to the port of Antwerp until further notice.

The German agent said he did not know what goods the Iranian ships loaded and unloaded in the ports in Syria and Russia. ‘That falls outside the scope of our contractual obligations.’ The Germans say they only know about the innocent goods that were imported and exported here in Antwerp. ‘Typical imports on HDS ships are polyethylene for packaging, used cooking oil for the biofuel sector, ceramic products such as tiles and foodstuffs such as pistachios. Exports from Antwerp to Iran are new machines, including for the beverage industry, used industrial equipment such as car parts, textile processing machines and insulation materials.’

All Iranian weapons intercepted en route to Houthis

Between May 2021 and January 2023, the US authorities already intercepted a mass weapon of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards destined for Yemen. This happened during routine maritime security operations in and around the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It involved more than 9,000 rifles, 284 machine guns, 194 rocket launchers, more than 70 anti-tank missiles and more than 700,000 pieces of ammunition. The French navy was also able to seize thousands of assault rifles, machine guns and anti-tank missiles in January 2023 in the Gulf of Oman, coming from Iran and on their way to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

 

Now that the six Iranian ships are no longer coming to Antwerp (for the time being) – the Daisy was the last to arrive here until November 9, 2024 – it is striking that they have immediately shifted their entire route. They have not been to Syria or Russia in recent months. The Azargoun is now moving to China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Libya. The Artenos now goes to India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the UAE. The Kashan to India, the UAE, Kenya and Tanzania. The Shiba to India, Libya, Turkey and the UAE. The Artam to China, India, Tanzania, Kenya and the UAE.

Can the ships still return to Antwerp? Antwerp Port Authority refers ‘all questions about Iranian ships’ to the Federal Public Service Mobility. According to Mobility spokesman Thomas De Spiegelaere, it is currently sufficient that the Iranian state-owned shipping company IRISL has been sanctioned to no longer allow the six ships to enter our ports, even though those ships are officially owned by another company. ‘IRISL is listed in the databases as the beneficial owner of the ships. That is enough for us to stop them. A ship has several managers and operators.’

Everything checked

“But other Iranian ships that do not belong to IRISL are still allowed to come to Belgian ports for legitimate reasons,” says the spokesperson for the FPS Mobility. “There are no sanctions against Iranian ships in general. We are not bound by the American sanctions against Iran and will therefore not follow them.’

In 2023 and 2024, twelve different Iranian ships came to Antwerp, accounting for 44 visits. In 20 of the 44 cases, it concerned ships that were sanctioned by the US. And six of the twelve ships would therefore have been involved in espionage or arms deliveries.

The question is whether other Iranian ships can now simply use Antwerp as a ‘cover’. Because the six ships remained untouched all this time. De Spiegelaere: ‘When these ships still came to the Belgian ports, there were no EU sanctions. There were sanctions against specific goods or dual-use goods. But that has always been checked, the calls of these ships were always legitimate and the goods that were loaded or unloaded were in accordance with the rules. So there were no legal grounds for refusing these ships.’

For our investigation into the Iranian ships, we received help from foreign fellow journalists: the Iranian Mahtab Divsalar (Zamaneh), the Syrian Mohammad Bassiki (SIRAJ), the German Ruben Schaar (Paper Trail Media), Birte Schohaus and Dimitri Tokmetzis (Follow the Money)and of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The post From espionage to arms deliveries: the shady practices behind the Iranian ships in Antwerp appeared first on SIRAJ.

As 2012 began, the war in Syria entered a new phase, with the Syrian regime continuing its military campaign against the opposition, which had gained control over extensive parts of the country. Around November 2015, Russia officially intervened to support the Syrian regime in its battles and open fronts to shift the balance of power in its favor.

Simultaneously, Western economic sanctions imposed in September 2011 by the European Union and the United States on economic and political figures, including President Bashar al-Assad and his family, significantly weakened the financial position of the Syrian regime. At that time, the Syrian regime heavily relied on paper currency to facilitate transactions, pay salaries to government employees, and manage public spending in the face of sanctions.

Amidst these challenges, in early 2012 the Syrian government established a new way to replenish the country’s treasury with “cash” or physical money. Previously, the Syrian government printed Syrian currency (both paper and metal) in collaboration with a subsidiary of the Central Bank in Austria, but this cooperation ceased due to sanctions. This new currency-printing operation utilized two companies in Cyprus to facilitate the printing process. Despite official government assurances that this step would not affect the economic situation, there remained considerable mystery surrounding the details of this operation.

The printing operation occurred at a time when the Syrian government had an increasing need for liquid cash to finance ongoing government spending, military efforts, and the payment of salaries to government employees, including security forces and the army. A researcher familiar with the printing operation stated: “The current financial policy of the regime relies on financial deficit, and it is believed that this policy is the reason behind resorting to currency printing after the depletion of the foreign currency reserves of 20 billion Syrian pounds in 2011. This trend led to a reduction in foreign currencies in the markets, which were beyond government control in northern and eastern Syria.”

At that time, the general state budget was 27 billion dollars, the largest in the country’s history. However, it later declined due to the continuation of the security situation, the escalating impact of international sanctions on the regime, and the lack of financial income from exports, constituting 25% of the government’s budget and reaching 16,550 billion Syrian pounds (about 5.489 billion dollars at the official exchange rate).

Economic advisor and head of the Syria Economic Working Group, Dr. Osama Al-Qadi, explains that when the value of the currency decreases, the central bank finds itself compelled to print large amounts of money to cover the increasing inflation and rising wages.

A new investigation by SIRAJ reveals the behind-the-scenes actions of the Syrian currency-printing operations under the supervision of the Central Bank of Syria, through the use of services provided by two companies based in Cyprus, an EU member.  A Syrian-Russian businessman who owns the printing operation has been described by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as being subject to sanctions. This information comes from the “Cyprus Confidential” project, conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in collaboration with SIRAJ, Paper Trail Media, and 68 media partners worldwide.

“Cyprus Confidential” Revelations

ICIJ’s project, which  also included the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit – SIRAJ – reveals how Russian elite, including those close to President Vladimir Putin, used financial service companies based in Cyprus to protect their wealth. It further details how, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these entities safeguarded assets worth billions of dollars from imminent sanctions.

The ICIJ’s analysis of over 3.6 million leaked documents found nearly 800 companies and credit funds registered in secretive jurisdictions owned or controlled by Russians subjected to sanctions since 2014. The investigation also uncovered dealings between the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and a registered intermediary in Cyprus regarding the purchase of American oil-drilling equipment during the peak of the Syrian civil war, despite U.S. and EU sanctions.

These companies include over 650 Cypriot entities, serving as parent companies for Russian properties, subsidiaries of Russian conglomerates, and mysterious entities used to conceal investments in globally renowned real estate, yachts, and artwork.

Funding Assad’s Military Efforts

In the summer of 2012, Joznak, the government-controlled Russian Mint company responsible for currency printing, Joznak,, conducted a secret operation to print new Syrian banknotes, weighing a total of 240 tons.

According to the “Cyprus Confidential” documents obtained by SIRAJ, the Syrian regime relied on companies and brokers in Moscow for banknote printing in 2012 to circumvent international sanctions, violating both U.S. and EU sanctions and the Caesar Act.

The Caesar Act, signed in December 2019, aims to impose sanctions on the Syrian regime and individuals associated with it, as well as entities supporting its activities, targeting specific industries such as aviation, oil and gas production, central bank, and currency printing operations.

By January 2014, a draft contract was established between Joznak and the Cyprus-registered company Frumineti Investments LTD, facilitating the printing of hundreds of millions of Syrian pound-denominated banknotes.

The U.S. Treasury Executive Order further revealed that two registered Cypriot companies, Piruseti Enterprises LTD and Frumineti Investments LTD, served as executive interfaces for the Syrian regime in 2014. They assisted in facilitating the banknote printing process, thereby violating international sanctions and the Caesar Act.

Jihad Yazigi, a Syrian economic analyst, noted that Lebanon, although officially ceasing official dealings with the Syrian regime due to Western sanctions, still serves as a primary location to evade sanctions. He highlighted the strong historical and familial ties between Syria and Lebanon, facilitating joint ventures and partnerships, even though efforts decreased significantly after the Lebanese economic collapse.

The investigation also sheds light on the extensive network of financial transactions and hidden assets orchestrated by the Russian elite through Cypriot entities and the complicity of Lebanese partners in facilitating these operations. The involvement of Cyprus and Lebanon in such financial activities raises concerns about their roles in enabling and supporting regimes facing international sanctions.

The revelations in the “Cyprus Confidential” project underscore the intricate web of financial operations involving Russian elites, Syrian regime figures, and international entities. The investigation not only exposes the exploitation of financial loopholes but also highlights the need for more robust measures to combat illicit financial activities that undermine international sanctions and contribute to the perpetuation of oppressive regimes.

Financial fronts for the Syrian Regime

Before the signing of the contract between Joznak and the Central Bank of Syria, in late 2012, Tempbank, a Russian bank sanctioned by the United States issued a letter of credit on behalf of the Cypriot company Piruseti on behalf of the Central Bank of Syria. This company had previously played a similar role in facilitating transactions for the Syrian government through the sanctioned Central Bank of Syria.

In July 2013, Syrian banking and business officials participated in paying Piruseti over $4 million for a European energy company. In this transaction, a Russian bank, acting on behalf of Piruseti, paid the authorization document to the energy company. Piruseti acted on behalf of the Central Bank of Syria to initiate this deal, complying with the sanctions order issued by the U.S. Treasury.

To identify the owners of the Cypriot companies that facilitated this process, SIRAJ scrutinized the records of these two Cypriot companies.

The Secret Work of Shell Companies

Front companies play a vital role in facilitating operations for internationally sanctioned entities such as the Syrian regime. They provide a legal and commercial interface to engage with the international market despite reservations against these governments. These companies typically operate in complex and non-transparent ways, allowing sanctioned governments to achieve their objectives without drawing international attention.

The open corporates platform, an international company registration database, provides more information about these two Cypriot companies and their owner, Syrian-born businessman Issa Al Zaidi, who holds Russian citizenship. Al Zaidi was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2014, subjecting him to asset freezes and property bans, according to the U.S. Treasury.  The two companies were also sanctioned in the same year.

Piruseti Enterprises LTDwas founded on July 26, 2011, while Frumineti Investments LTD was officially established a day later. Issa Al Zaidi, born in Syria and holding Russian citizenship, graduated in 1964 from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where he studied engineering. He is the owner and CEO of several small companies with “no significant capital,” according to the records. Al Zaidi has international connections with the Center for Scientific Studies and Research, believed to be the Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and ballistic missiles, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

SIRAJ directed questions to Issa Al Zaidi about his role in the currency-printing process through his Cypriot companies, but he did not respond to the inquiries.

Two Cypriot companies that facilitated the printing of Syrian banknotes were dissolved in 2016, even though they and their founders remain on the U.S. sanctions list.

New Syrian Banknotes and Money Transfer Methods

According to economic expert Dr. Karam Shaar, the most significant factor that led the Syrian regime to print banknotes is the substantial need for cash liquidity to cover expenses. This need has been evident in the recurring deficits in the Syrian budgets in recent years.

Dr. Shaar explains that the resources allocated for spending were much less than required, leading to the printing of additional amounts to fill this gap, mostly categorized under the “taken from reserves” section in the budget.

Budget expenditures are typically divided into current and investment expenditures. Current expenditures include ongoing expenses such as salaries, pensions, and administrative expenses. Dr. Shaar, a Senior Fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy Investigations, states that the printed money is primarily injected into the market by paying salaries, both for military personnel and civilians, along with the routine needs of the state for daily expenditures.

How Were the Funds Transferred to Damascus?

The Syrian Central Bank denied any money transfer operations in 2012 and affirmed that the new banknotes in circulation, particularly the 5,000 Syrian pound notes, were intended solely for replacing damaged or worn-out currency and had no impact on the economy.

But according to flight records  reviewed by SIRAJ, a Syrian government aircraft transported a total of 240 tons of banknotes from Moscow to Damascus over a 10-week period from July 9 to September 15, 2012. The documents indicate that Syrian Air Force Ilyushin-76 cargo planes conducted eight round-trip flights between Damascus International Airport and Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, transporting 30 tons of banknotes on each return flight to Syria. These records have copies in both Arabic and English, along with copies of transit requests sent to Iran in Persian.

Each time “banknotes” were listed in the cargo, the plane took an indirect route. Instead of flying directly over Turkish airspace, as civilian planes do, the Ilyushin-76 cargo plane operated by the Syrian Air Force avoided Turkey, flying over Iraq, Iran, and Azerbaijan.

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  A book directed from the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the embassy in Tehran, explaining the quantities of banknotes intended to be transported aboard the Ilyushin-76 cargo plane

Over a period of 10 weeks from July 9 to September 15, 2012, the Syrian government was in urgent need of cash. The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent eight urgent telegrams through the office of the minister, copies of which were obtained in Arabic, English, and Persian. These telegrams were addressed to the Syrian ambassador’s office in Tehran, urgently requesting the embassy to communicate with the relevant Iranian authorities to obtain permission for the Syrian cargo plane, the Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76T with the registration number YK-ATA, to fly over Iranian airspace for a round trip flight from Damascus to Moscow and back.

One of the telegrams, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, requested permission from the Iranians to allow the first round trip flight (4421/4422) on September 13, 2012, and the second round trip flight (4423/4424) on September 15, 2012.

These consecutive flights of the Syrian Ilyushin cargo plane were supposed to transport Syrian printed banknotes. A document attached to these telegrams, directed from the ministry to the embassy in three languages, indicated that these flights would transport 30 tons of banknotes from Moscow to Damascus.

The Syrian cargo plane, the Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76T, registered under the number YK-ATA, belonged to the Syrian Arab Airlines.

The 5,000 Syrian Pound Banknote: Addressing Inflation and Financial Challenges

In 2019, the Syrian government reintroduced new banknotes with a denomination of 5,000 Syrian pounds, which entered circulation in 2021. These new banknotes, equivalent to half a U..S.. dollar, were issued to counter the effects of inflation that occurred in previous years, according to a statement from the Central Bank.

The statement highlighted that printing these banknotes aimed to “meet the actual trading needs of banknotes, ensuring ease in cash transactions, reducing their costs, and contributing to addressing the effects of inflation that occurred in recent years. Additionally, it aimed to reduce the density of cash transactions due to the rising prices during the war years.”

Dr. Abdul Hakim Al-Masri, Minister of Economy and Finance in the Interim Syrian Government, told SIRAJ, “With the ongoing deficit, the Syrian regime has been printing new banknotes in Moscow since 2012 until today without productive cover or reserves of foreign currencies or gold. This has caused significant inflation, a decline in the value of the lira, and its collapse, as it was not accompanied by production or reserves of hard currencies and gold.”

According to the website Coin Update, the new banknotes, dated 2019, were produced by the state-owned printing facility Goznak, in Russia, upon the request of the Syrian Central Bank. The 5000 Syrian pound banknote, dated 2019 on both sides, was printed using engraved technology on secure paper with a cotton watermark, boasting high-security features difficult to forge or counterfeit, according to the Central Bank of Syria.

The new 5,000 Syrian pound banknote was introduced by the Central Bank of Syria on January 24, 2021. Five bankers, including experts overseeing banks in Syria and Arab countries, confirmed to SIRAJ that the new banknote was printed in Moscow. However, Syrian and Russian officials did not respond to the investigators’ questions to confirm.

Printing money without backing is likely to have a significant impact on an economy already suffering a severe crisis since 2011. Joseph Daher, a Syrian-Swiss university professor at the University of Lausanne, expects the budget deficit in Syria to increase from 4.86 trillion Syrian pounds (equivalent to 1.62 billion U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate during this period) to 9.5 trillion Syrian pounds (equivalent to 800 million U.S. dollars). This represents a real value decrease of approximately 51%.

In 2023, approximately 90% of Syrians were living below the poverty line, with over 15 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Additionally, 6.5 million faced food insecurity and 13.2 million required healthcare, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

According to the annual budget schedule, nominal values in Syrian pounds increased from 2010 to 2021, accompanied by a significant decrease in the value against the dollar. This could exacerbate inflation, leading to further deterioration in living conditions. The researcher Shaar noted, “The numbers indicate that the fiscal policy relies on printing large amounts of money, with approximately 6 billion Syrian pounds injected into the market in 2012 and 1.4 billion Syrian pounds in 2019.”

Syria’s inflation rate surpassed 16,000% between 2011 and 2023. In 2022, inflation rates were 100.7%, and in 2023 they reached 104.7%, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics and estimated by the Ministry of Finance. The overall inflation rate between 2011 and 2023 is reported to be 16,137.32%.

Experts believe that the primary cause of this inflation is the continuous printing of money, as each printing operation leads to inflation and a decrease in the value of the local currency.

Shaar believes the ongoing budget deficit leads to continuous financial strain, with a deficit in the general budget estimated at around 31% of the total value from 2011 to 2023. A former official at the Commercial Bank of Syria, one of the oldest active banks in Syria, said in a phone call with SIRAJ: “The primary purpose of printing banknotes is to continue paying salaries to employees and security and military forces in the country.” This step is crucial for the survival of the regime”.

The post “Cyprus Confidential”: Syrian Printing Currency Machine appeared first on SIRAJ.

The young man was hopeful of reaching Europe for a new beginning in life. Although the conditions of the journey aboard the overcrowded boat were far from ideal, he was content as long as he could fulfill his dream of setting foot on European soil. However, their optimism was suddenly disrupted when a blue ship appeared on the horizon and approached them. It circled their boat, causing high waves that affected the balance of their fragile vessel, which almost capsized.

“Should we turn off the engine or drown you?” shouted a person from aboard the approaching ship, carrying a rifle and dressed in military attire. Its passengers quickly pulled out machine guns and began firing towards them. “Our boat was punctured, and the engine was turned off,” Ahmed narrates to the investigative team about what happened that day.

Immediately, one of the military personnel jumped onto the tilting boat and asked to know the identity of the captain/driver. He remained on board with the migrants until nightfall before the operation to tow the exhausted migrants’ boat back to the shores of Libya began by evening, after they had entered the Maltese search and rescue zone.

“It’s the Tareq bin Zeyad ship—the name Tareq bin Zeyad is also written on the ship. I saw it with my own eyes,” adds Ahmed, saying this to the investigative team from a location withheld for security reasons.

But what is the Tareq bin Zeyad ship? Whom does it belong to, and how did it obtain information and coordinates of the migrants’ boat, leading to its retrieval and return to Libya? Who coordinated and managed this communication with the intention of preventing the boat from  reaching European search and rescue waters and returning them from there? Each time migrants attempt to travel by boat again, they are forced to start from scratch, in addition to facing various forms of torture and periods of imprisonment, usually ending with their families being asked to pay ransom for their release.

To uncover this covert coordination, SIRAJ collaborated with a group of partners and investigative newsrooms, including Lighthouse Reports, Malta Today, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, and Daraj Media to form this investigative report. This collaboration relied on a sequential analysis of maritime and aerial navigation data, examination of documents, interviews with victims who had just emerged from Libyan prisons, Libyan officials, tracking social media accounts, as well as a linguistic analysis of voice recordings by experts in linguistics and language technology at the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology at the University of Malta. The aim was to analyze the source of voices (in English) recorded from calls of unidentified pilots on the radio.

This investigative report also reveals the entity operating the Tareq bin Zeyad ship, which has become a ghost, haunting migrants in the Mediterranean. It explores how this ship collaborates to tow and return migrants with European entities represented by the Maltese authorities and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known by its acronym, Frontex.

The investigative team witnessed at least five cases of towing and returning migrant boats from this ship between May and August of last year. The father of one of the Syrian youths who were on board one of the towed boats says: “My son told me that when he reached Maltese waters, they contacted the Coast Guard and Rescue teams (Italian), who were supposed to come to rescue them and their boat. On the following morning, they were surprised to find the Tareq bin Zeyad ship hovering around them. They tied the boat with a rope and returned it from Malta to Benghazi, imprisoning those on board immediately.”

Tareq bin Zeyad…The Ghost Ship

A video clip captured by one of the aircraft operated by the German non-governmental organization Sea Watch, which is dedicated to search and rescue, shows a ship named Tareq bin Zeyad making its way through the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

This 42-meter long blue ship is traversed by a wavy red line extending from its bow to its midsection. It is surrounded by black lifebuoys and is distinguished by its ability to sail at a high speed of more than 19 knots.

The ship was manufactured three years ago at the Grandweld Shipyard in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, upon the request of an Iranian maritime services company. It was initially named Charlie 4 in 2020.

According to data from the International Maritime Organization, the ship has been owned by an Emirati company since February 11, 2023. There is not much information available about the company and its activities, leading the investigative team to check its registered address in Dubai. The company’s registered address appears to be a warehouse with some small ships. When a journalist contacted the company’s phone numbers, an employee denied any connection of the company with the Tareq bin Zeyad ship, stating that their activities are limited to ship repairs.

Behind the UAE and Iranian links to the ship, there is mystery surrounding the details of its purchase, the reason for its transfer, and how it ended up in the port of Benghazi. Its arrival came a month after its name was changed from Charlie 4 to TAREQ BIN ZEYAD—the same name as the largest military brigade in eastern Libya, led by military leader Khalifa Haftar’s son, Saddam Haftar, forming part of the Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar.

Information found by the investigative team indicates that the ship’s captain is a middle-aged man with a medium beard, of non-Libyan nationality, whose Facebook account shows he is from Ethiopia. There are photos of him on the ship’s surface dating back to when its name was Charlie 4, and he can be seen in pictures with some Tareq bin Zeyad members near the port, carrying weapons and wearing black masks.

The captain is not the only non-Libyan national crewmember. Testimonies from some migrants we spoke to indicate the presence of technicians and sailors from Indian and Pakistani nationalities among the ship’s leadership.

Moreover, videos on TikTok show young people in their twenties aboard, wearing military uniforms with the emblem “Brigade of Tareq bin Zeyad the enhanced.” Sometimes, they are seen taking pictures in which they gloat by holding their rifles in clothing that matches with the clothing of some of the fanciest Italian designers, praising former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and former Libyan leader Muammar Al Qaddafi. 

Away from Italian designers, barbecues, and dancing to the tunes of Libyan folk songs and American rap music, an Amnesty International report issued last December presents a completely different image of the activities of the Tareq bin Zeyad Brigade, the striking force in eastern Libya. The report, consisting of 21 pages, describes dozens of documented cases of “terrorist and illegal activities practiced by members of this brigade, including kidnapping for ransom, murder, rape, and torture against migrants and individuals openly opposing Haftar’s policies in eastern and southern Libya.”

The smuggling maze investigation that SIRAJ and its partners learned about in July last year revealed the activity of an international smuggling network in eastern Libya, transporting migrants by air from their countries like Syria to Benina Airport in Benghazi. They were then sent on fishing trawlers (boats) in perilous journeys that could end in the drowning of hundreds of them.

Cooking Rice in Seawater

It has been over two weeks since the members of the Tareq bin Zeyad Brigade towed Bassel and his companions’ boat on August 18 from the Maltese search and rescue zone. Throughout this period, the “kidnappers,” as they are described, had not provided him with any normal meal except for rice cooked in salty seawater.

On that day, Bassel, a Syrian man in his thirties and a father of two, the eldest being five years old, was undergoing his daily torture routine at one of the Benghazi port points controlled by the 20-20 Brigade, which is affiliated with Tareq bin Zeyad.

The routine torture began with brutal beatings, after which Bassel was taken to the edge of the port, to be thrown into the 10-meter-deep sea and left there for hours while trying to swim to avoid drowning. Meanwhile, the seawater aggravated the wounds left by the torture on his body.

When the armed man pulled him out of the seawater, Bassel noticed something unusual. The man was holding a bottle of water, a loaf of bread, and a boiled egg.

“This is your last day. Eat this meal and drink the water now because in hell, there is no water,” one of the men told him. The feeling of hunger at that moment was much stronger than the impact of the death sentence on him, Bassel told the investigative team, recalling that moment: “I ate as if I hadn’t heard my death sentence. I was very hungry.”

Next to the man who gave him water and food, a bearded clergyman stood.  “They dressed me in an orange suit, ordered me to place my head on the wall, put my hands behind my back, asked me to recite the shahada, insulted me with the worst words, and then opened fire with their rifles.”

Two weeks prior, Bassel and his companions were still in international waters under the jurisdiction of the Greek search and rescue zone. He remembers well what happened two days before his arrest on August 16, saying, “We were between Cyprus and Greece when we saw a reconnaissance plane hovering over our boat. It continued for a while. The boat’s captain told us it was a Greek reconnaissance plane.”

A screenshot from the ADSB Exchange website tracking aircraft shows the flight path of the Frontex Heron 1 drone as it circled and hovered around the boat carrying Bassel and his companions on August 16, 2023.

The investigative team verified Bassel’s account by reviewing flight data between Greece and Cyprus. They found a drone flight for a Heron 1 aircraft operated by Frontex, circling various points on August 16 in an east-to-west sequence. This indicates that the drone was monitoring a boat coming from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean heading west, aligning with the timeline provided by Bassel to the investigative team.

Two days after Frontex tracked the boat carrying Bassel and other migrants, we observed the same drone flying over Bassel’s boat within the Maltese search and rescue area. The drone followed the same path as the boat traveling from east to west, consistent with Bassel’s boat trajectory.

When we questioned Frontex about tracking Bassel’s boat twice, they confirmed through their media office that the drone did indeed spot the boat two days before it was intercepted by Tareq bin Zeyad. They also witnessed the return operation two days later by the Tareq bin Zeyad ship.

Frontex affirmed that they acted according to protocol: after the initial boat sighting, they informed the authorities in Greece and Malta about the boat, while denying any knowledge of how the ship obtained the boat’s coordinates before intercepting and returning it to Benghazi.

The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in response to the investigation’s findings, stated that the boat was in the Maltese search and rescue area when Frontex informed them. They claim to have followed the law, informing the Maltese authorities about the boat as soon as they knew. However, Malta has not responded to journalists’ questions about whether they shared Bassel’s boat coordinates with the Tareq bin Zeyad.

Dana Schmalz, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Public Law and International Law, said: “According to European Union law, Frontex must act in ways that respect human rights in all its operations. Therefore, coordinates should not be passed in a way that leads to violent interceptions by militias engaging in the torture of migrants.”

The Witness Identifies his Torturers

Somewhere inside the port of Benghazi, Bassel was preparing for his execution. “When I heard the sound of gunfire around me, I fell to the ground. I examined my body, searching for blood, before the bearded man and the elements burst into laughter at my condition. I was in a state of unconsciousness at that moment and did not know whether I was alive or dead,” says Bassel in a trembling voice.

The feigned execution by the brigade members was not the end of the torture. Bassel recounted other events of beating, humiliation, and torture. They would immerse him daily in salty seawater for several hours to burn his wounds after beating and torturing him. After a period, he was transferred to a villa belonging to one of the infamous warlords in eastern Libya, forcing him to work for free in the villa’s garden, which housed several predatory animals.

Bassel’s ordeal only ended after several weeks when he was transferred to another armed group, which negotiated his release with his relatives. After a period of negotiations, an agreement was reached to release him for a sum of 4,000 euros. Bassel was eventually released after about two months of captivity.

Bassel’s case is one of the rare instances documented where an individual was subjected to torture and abduction after Frontex tracked his boat. Consequently, the investigative team sought additional evidence to confirm the main allegations in Bassel’s testimony.

In addition to examining flight records, we obtained a report on the case of ‘forced or involuntary disappearance’ submitted by Bassel’s relatives to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances during his abduction.

The person who negotiated with the abductors on behalf of Bassel shared a conversation that took place between him and a person with a Libyan number via with the journalists. Upon investigation of the Libyan number in the conversation, it was found to belong to an individual working with the Ministry of Justice in eastern Libya.

When we showed Bassel a picture of the person involved in the conversation, he immediately confirmed that the guy was among the individuals who tortured him. He also recognized most of the armed men on board the ship when their pictures were shown to him.

A Broadcast Through the Airwaves to Tareq bin Zeyad

The investigative team obtained a voice message recorded by the Open Arms ship, which belongs to a non-governmental rescue organization. It was recorded on August 2 at 05:45 GMT on channel 16, an open channel that all ships and aircrafts can monitor, for sending and receiving distress calls at sea via radio waves. 

The message sender says:

Approximately 11 hours after broadcasting the call on channel 16, at 16:36 GMT, a reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the non-governmental organization Sea Watch was monitoring the waters of the Mediterranean in search of migrant boats that might be in danger. At that time, the plane spotted the ship Tareq bin Zeyad, carrying many migrants within Maltese waters, heading south.

To find the sender who provided Tareq bin Zeyad with the coordinates, and who did not identify himself, the investigative team examined all flights coming from Malta on that day. They obtained real-time flight monitoring data from Sea Watch, showing one of the screenshots taken by a member of the organization at 06:52 GMT. The image indicates the presence of an aircraft belonging to the Maltese Air Force coming from the location of the coordinates shared on the radio at 05:45 GMT. This suggests the possibility that the unknown sender may have been on board that plane, as it was coming from the same coordinates, one hour and seven minutes after sharing the coordinates on radio channel 16.

The investigative team contacted the Maltese Armed Forces and shared the audio recording with them to determine whether their aircraft was communicating with the Tareq bin Zeyad. In response, the Maltese Armed Forces did not confirm or deny communication with the ship, stating that maritime personnel are obligated to share information with other ships in the area.

To go beyond the confirmation or denial by Maltese authorities, the investigative team sought assistance from Alexandra Vella and Sarah Grech, professors at the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology at the University of Malta. They analyzed the audio recording in English on channel 16 and provided the investigative team with a detailed analytical report.

According to the analysis, it was confirmed that the speaker in the recording is Maltese. This conclusion was drawn from identifying several characteristics in the speaker’s accent, which align with Maltese language features, indicating that the speaker’s native language is Maltese.

Nora Markard, Professor of Public International Law and International Human Rights Law at the University of Münster, Germany, commented on Malta’s sharing of coordinates with Tareq bin Zeyad, stating: “This is a clear violation of maritime law. This case could be described as interception through the use of an intermediary, as Tareq bin Zeyad, in this case, intercepted the boat on behalf of Malta.”

Piracy and Kidnapping at Sea or Rescue?

On July 26, 2022, at around 1:00 PM, 24-year-old Khaled, hailing from Manbij in northern Syria, along with two hundred other migrants, advanced in their boat inside the Maltese search and rescue area. They were surprised by a ship approaching them flying the Libyan flag, asking them to stop the engine.

The name Tareq bin Zeyad written on its side and the Libyan flag fluttering on its mast raised suspicions among the boat’s passengers, who refused to stop the engine and attempted to escape.

Their decision to resist did not sit well with the armed individuals on the ship’s deck. “They hit our ship from the right side, then one of the military personnel took out a powerful water cannon and opened it on us. Fear spread among men, women, and children. Some burst into tears, and the elderly began to shout at the captain, demanding him to stop,” recalls Khaled, remembering how the ship’s crew forced them back to Benghazi.

For Bassel and Ahmed, whose boat faced a similar fate, their story began with the sighting of their boat by a reconnaissance aircraft belonging to Frontex that morning.

Frontex states that its aircraft saw the boat at 07:17 GMT, and, due to overcrowding, the organization’s experts decided to send a distress call with the boat’s coordinates to all ships in the area.

According to Frontex, no ship responded to this call except Tareq bin Zeyad, which expressed its readiness to carry out a “rescue operation.”

The investigative team observed the movement of passing ships in that area through maritime navigation websites and found two ships close to Khaled’s boat. Neither of these two ships changed their course after hearing the distress call. When the team contacted one of the ships to verify receiving the call for immediate rescue, the response was that they had not received any instructions from the relevant authorities.

Frontex states that it contacted all rescue coordination centers in the maritime area and did not receive any response. After sending the distress call, its aircraft continued to hover around the boat for about an hour before returning to its base due to fuel depletion.

Legal expert Nora Markard commented on this situation, stating: “Frontex knows who the Tareq bin Zeyad is and what this militia is doing. Frontex knows that this situation is closer to a kidnapping than a rescue operation. It is evident that maritime rescue coordination centers did not take charge of coordinating the case at all, and Frontex should have assumed that the militia would take the individuals on the boat, contrary to international law, to an unsafe place where they might face further violations.”

Coast Guard or Armed Militias?

The investigative team examined one of the daily work reports from last August regarding rescue operations in the Mediterranean border regions carried out by Frontex, in addition to many other documents.

In the report, the team found a reference to a migrant boat spotted by one of Frontex’s aircraft on August 16 near the shores of Misrata. The report indicates that Frontex shared the coordinates with the Libyan Search and Rescue Center in Tripoli, and the migrant boat ended up being returned to Libya by a vessel belonging to the Libyan Coast Guard named “Tareq.”

Brigadier Bashir Balnour, Director of the General Administration of Coastal Security, denied any direct leadership over Tareq ben Ziyad, stating that they cooperate with them occasionally. 

However, Frontex confirmed in its responses to the investigative team that Tareq is Tareq bin Zeyad, considering the ship as a coast guard vessel.

On the other hand, Major Masoud Abdel Samad, Operations Director at the Libyan Coast Guard in Tripoli, denied that the Tariq bin Ziyad is affiliated with the Libyan Coast Guard in Tripoli, stating that they share coordinates when needed by the Coast Guards in Benghazi who in turn can delegate whoever they want, as long as the operation is done.

Frontex’s collaboration with the Libyan Coast Guard affiliated with the Dbeibeh government in western Libya is known to followers of rescue affairs in the region. Simultaneously, it sparks controversy among the European public, as numerous reports and investigations have highlighted various attacks, such as kidnapping, ransom demands, forced labor, or even rape, against migrants returned to Libya.

The European Court of Human Rights previously ruled that migrants should not be returned to Libya because they would be exposed to torture and death. Governments justified their actions by stating that the Libyan Coast Guard is responsible for its search and rescue area, despite its unfavorable outcomes. This aligns with their reluctance to accept more migrants.

The documented cases in the investigation show that Malta directly shared coordinates of migrant boats with the Tareq bin Zeyad militia on several occasions. Frontex’s sharing of boat coordinates with the Tripoli government means that the coordinates might find their way to militias kidnapping and torturing migrants in eastern Libya, with the ultimate goal of seeking out ransoms from the migrants’ families in eastern Libya.

Markard commented on this entanglement, saying, “Frontex and national rescue coordination centers should not provide information to any Libyan party. There is enough documentation of human rights violations against refugees returned by the Libyans. Libya is not a safe place.”

Many European countries, including Italy and Malta, seek to strengthen their ties with General Khalifa Haftar, the strongman ruling eastern Libya, to execute and secure their interests on the other side of the Mediterranean, hoping to assist in curbing illegal migrant flows departing from Libyan shores.

On May 8, the same month during which the Tareq bin Zeyad returned Ahmed’s boat with 500 migrants from Maltese waters, the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni held a meeting with General Khalifa Haftar, this time on Libyan territory in the Barqa region, to discuss migration files and mutual cooperation. The Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Tiani, considered Haftar to be the most powerful figure, asserting that it is appropriate to talk to him about migration.

As European countries continue to enhance internal protective policies to prevent more waves of refugees from North Africa, specifically Libya, from reaching their territories, Bassel seeks to recover from his ordeal. He says, “Everything in my life changed after the incident. My physical wounds healed, but the psychological effects of torture have not left me yet.”

A version of this investigation was published in Arabic on Daraj, and Jana Barkat participated in its preparation.

The names of witnesses have been changed for security reasons and to protect their identities.
The Source: DARAJ. 

The post Distressed Migrants: From Maltese Planes and Frontex Guards to the Tareq Ben Zeyad Ship appeared first on SIRAJ.

The 6 February earthquake caused widespread destruction over a large area of southern Turkey and northwestern Syria.

Within Syria, the worst-hit region was the opposition-held enclave, including Idlib and parts of Aleppo province, where at least 4,191 people were killed, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).

In government-controlled areas, the death toll was at least 394 people, with most of those deaths reported in the town of Jableh in Latakia province, according to SNHR.

Other sources put the death toll in Syria even higher. A UN spokesperson told Siraj that at least 6,000 people had died in the country. The International Medical Corps said in April that 7,259 people were confirmed killed in Syria.

After more than a decade of war, the opposition-held region was already in a state of humanitarian crisis, with a population of 4.6 million swollen by those displaced from other areas by the conflict and aid deliveries into the enclave long restricted to a single border crossing from Turkey.

Search and rescue efforts after the earthquake largely relied on volunteers from the Syria Civil Defence, the so-called White Helmets who for years have operated as a de facto emergency service in opposition-held areas pummelled by air strikes and shelling.

Footage showed White Helmets volunteers and others desperately searching for survivors by digging through rubble with their hands and basic tools, highlighting the lack of specialist equipment and the improvised nature of the rescue effort.

“After the earthquake, I evacuated my three daughters from the house to the car and didn’t see them for five days,” said Ahmad Yaziji, a member of the Idlib branch of the Syria Civil Defence.

“Several other volunteers left the evacuation areas in order to bury their loved ones before rapidly returning to the rescue. There were so many locations where people were still alive and trapped under the rubble.”

According to the Syria Civil Defence, its volunteers rescued 2,950 people from the rubble and retrieved the bodies of 2,172 people from 182 sites.

The lack of an immediate UN-coordinated response prompted angry criticism from Raed al-Saleh, the head of the Syria Civil Defence.

Saleh told Siraj his organisation had sent distress calls to the UN on the day of the earthquake requesting the deployment of specialist rescue teams.

Opposition authorities including the Salvation Government, the civil administration in Idlib backed by the dominant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group, and the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government in Azaz also requested international assistance.

“Let me be clear: The White Helmets received no support from the United Nations during the most critical moments of the rescue operations,” Saleh wrote in an opinion piece for CNN one week after the earthquake.

“The UN’s failure to respond quickly to this catastrophe is shameful. When I asked the UN why help had failed to arrive in time, the answer I received was bureaucracy. In the face of one of the deadliest catastrophes to strike the world in years, it seems the UN’s hands were tied by red tape.”

The critical importance of a quick response after an earthquake is embedded in search and rescue best practice.

In Turkey there were more than 7,800 live rescues within 24 hours of the earthquake. Despite a massive international effort, only 260 people were rescued alive over the next eight days.

In opposition-held Syria, the situation was very different. Families of some of the victims interviewed by Siraj have described hearing voices trapped under collapsed buildings for several days.

They believe their loved ones and many more lives could have been saved if rescue teams with appropriate equipment had been quickly deployed.

Muhammad al-Mustafa, 32, from the town of Jindires near the Turkish border, said he had to listen helplessly to the cries of his two-year-old son Wafeek and other members of his family trapped under the ruins of their home.

“It was like doomsday,” said Mustafa. “I remember how the voices started to fade on the second day. We couldn’t get them out on our own. There was so much rubble we needed specialist equipment.”

A search team eventually retrieved the bodies of Mustafa’s wife, son, parents and three siblings.

“The fact I could hear my child pleading for me to save him while I was unable to do so devastated me the most,” said Mustafa.

Similarly tragic scenes were playing out in towns and villages across the northwest.

In Bseenah, near Salqin in northwest Idlib province, 39-year-old Rami al-Abdullah said he could hear the screams of his wife and eldest daughter trapped under the rubble for two days after the quake. Only his one-and-a-half-year-old son was eventually pulled out alive.

“The whole village was demolished, and the Civil Defence could not reach everyone and save them,” said Abdullah. “Residents were trying to help, but they were afraid of aftershocks and new collapses.”

‘Coordination mechanisms’

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) operates an international emergency response system with the capacity to send rescue teams anywhere in the world within hours of a disaster.

The two main organisations, described by Ocha as “coordination mechanisms”, within this system are United Nations Disaster and Coordination (Undac) and the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (Insarag).

Undac’s responsibilities include assessing and coordinating emergency response missions, while Insarag is a network of search and rescue teams from 90 UN member states and international organisations.

Undac and Insarag typically send teams into disaster zones at the request of a government. But UN guidelines also allow for rescue efforts to be initiated by a UN resident coordinator in the affected country.

According to several sources who spoke to Siraj, including el-Mostafa Benlemlih, the UN’s resident coordinator in Syria until earlier this month, the Syrian government did file a request to the UN for help, but this was limited to government-controlled areas.

Benlemlih, who spoke to Siraj while he was still in the role, described Undac’s work as a “complement to national efforts”.

“The Undac team was deployed as soon as they received a request from the usual channels [the Syrian government]. The team was deployed to assess the situation in Aleppo, Latakia, Tartous, Homs and Hama,” said Benlemlih.

Asked why Undac had not deployed to opposition-held areas, Benlemlih said the UN had been “fully prepared to support those affected in Idlib and [opposition-held areas of] Aleppo”.

But he added: “However, the activation of the response system is linked to the approval of the concerned authorities, and is also linked to the provision of mechanisms to support logistical work and protection. These conditions were not available even for the humanitarian support we tried to deliver in the first hours of the disaster.”

Earlier this month, the UN named Adam Abdelmoula as its new residential coordinator in Syria.

Documents obtained by Siraj also show UN and Syrian officials discussed sending aid convoys – but not search and rescue teams – into opposition-held areas in the days after the earthquake.

But no convoys were sent across the front line. According to Reuters, the delivery of aid from government-held areas was opposed by HTS.

Details about Insarag’s response within Syria, and issues which hindered the UN rescue effort in the country, were discussed at a meeting of Insarag team leaders in Singapore on 28 February.

Search and rescue teams from Russia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Latakia, and teams from Tunisia, Armenia, Algeria and China were deployed to Aleppo, according to a presentation delivered at the meeting.

But challenges faced by Undac and Insarag included a “lack of awareness of the Government of Syria of the international response mechanisms” and the “lack of a basic structure to receive and coordinate international assistance including USAR [urban search and rescue]”.

Team leaders complained that coordination had been complicated by the involvement of multiple entities, including civil defence, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and national security, and by an “inconsistent approach of LEMA [local emergency management agency] in assigning USAR teams to geographic sectors”.

The Syrian government had not responded at the time of publication to questions from Siraj and MEE about why it had not asked for international rescue teams to be deployed to opposition-controlled areas.

In response to questions about why Undac and Insarag teams were not deployed into opposition-held Syria, Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for Ocha, said the deployment of search and rescue teams through Insarag was a matter for national governments rather than the UN.

Laerke said: “To be clear, the United Nations does not have search-and-rescue capabilities, including heavy machinery, nor does it decide which teams deploy to which countries for how long.”

Ocha’s role through Undac, he said, was limited to coordinating the work of search and rescue teams and sharing updates about casualties, damage and requests for assistance.

“While the UN can decide where to deploy its own staff, the decision to deploy national search-and-rescue teams rests solely with the national governments of those teams,” said Laerke.

‘Speed is critical’

Yet the failure of the UN to coordinate the deployment of search and rescue teams into opposition-controlled areas appears to fall short of Undac’s own guidelines on responding to “complex emergencies”, such as in countries in a state of civil war.

These guidelines are contained in the Undac Handbook, a reference guide for Undac team members involved in emergency missions.

The handbook acknowledges that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states must be fully respected, and that humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country.

But it makes an exception in circumstances in which “the legitimacy and territory of the State is under, often violent, dispute”.

The guidance reads: “This situation makes the adherence to the above principles problematic in complex emergencies. In these cases the commitment to the victims may supersede the commitment to the State.”

The handbook advises that “coordination efforts will need to acknowledge the legitimacy of competing authorities [and]… maintain effective relationships not only with the State but also with the antagonists and political opposition”.

It stresses, too, the urgency of deploying emergency teams as quickly as possible, particularly in the aftermath of an earthquake.

“In a natural disaster speed of response is critical and is measured in hours and days. This is especially so in an earthquake situation where trapped people are unlikely to survive more than 3-4 days unless rescued.”

According to one legal expert, the Syrian government’s failure to request or facilitate the deployment of rescue teams to opposition-held territory may be in breach of principles of international humanitarian law established through the Geneva Conventions guaranteeing access to conflict zones for humanitarian actors.

“If the Syrian authorities refused these teams entry into areas beyond their control, this is an arbitrary rejection prohibited by international law,” said Sama Kiki, executive director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme, a UK-based legal advocacy organisation.

Kiki added that a periodically renewed UN Security Council resolution permitting humanitarian aid to be sent into northwest Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing offered a further legal avenue, and an established route, for Undac and Insarag teams to be deployed into opposition territory.

Bodies instead of aid

The situation in northwest Syria was in stark contrast to the UN response in southern Turkey, where Insarag deployed 221 search and rescue teams from 82 countries in support of the rescue effort by Turkey’s own disaster agency (Afad), according to documents reviewed by Siraj.

In Idlib, the only international response in the days after the earthquake was a visit by a three-person Spanish team who crossed into Syria through Bab al-Hawa on 9 February independently of the UN aid effort.

Mazen Aloush, the media officer for the crossing, said the visit had been coordinated by a Salvation Government charitable support coordination office. It lasted only a few hours and was limited in its scope to assessing the damage, Aloush said.

Muhammad al-Sadiq, a Salvation Government spokesperson, said the Spanish team had trained local volunteers to use a sensor device to detect people still alive under the rubble.

No other equipment was provided, and hopes of finding any further survivors had by then mostly faded.

The Syria Civil Defence head Saleh told Siraj that assessment teams from a number of UN agencies finally entered opposition-held Syria six days after the earthquake.

“These were needs assessment teams, and not search and rescue,” Saleh said.

“After six days people had already died. No one was left from those who were alive.”

Those critical of the UN’s failure to send search and rescue teams and heavy-duty rescue equipment into Idlib through Bab al-Hawa question remarks, made by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on 9 February, in which he said damage to roads leading to the crossing had hindered the aid effort.

According to Aloush, the spokesperson for Bab al-Hawa, within hours of the earthquake the bodies of Syrians killed in Turkey were being delivered to the border post.

“On the evening of the same day, we received cars carrying bodies from all the stricken Turkish provinces without any problem on the roads,” he said.

Border crossing authorities reported 85 bodies delivered to Bab al-Hawa one day after the earthquake, with the number rising over the next few days to more than 1,200. Photos and videos posted on social media showed some of these bodies being delivered on flatbed trucks.

Laerke, the Ocha spokesperson, told Siraj that cross-border aid into northwest Syria had been briefly suspended due to road damage and because of casualties and injuries among staff at a UN aid hub in Reyhanli.

The failings of the UN response were frankly acknowledged by Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian relief chief, during a visit to Bab al-Hawa on 12 February.

“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths wrote in a tweet.

“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can. That’s my focus now.”

The following day, Griffiths was in Damascus for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Soon afterwards, two more border crossings from Turkey into opposition-held northwest Syria had opened for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, the chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that serious questions remained unanswered about the failure of the UN to deploy search and rescue teams into opposition-held territory.

“There was negligence on the part of the United Nations,” he said. “This is incomprehensible, unjustified, immoral and illegal.”

Ghany believes that at least dozens of lives could have been saved if the UN had taken prompt and decisive action. He said he had called on the UN to conduct an internal investigation but had not received a response.

UN officials, he said, had talked at length about the mechanisms and details of the earthquake response, but without providing adequate answers as to what had gone wrong.

“In the end, all of these mechanisms failed,” said Ghany.

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Among the companies that received U.N. procurement money in Syria was one owned by a sanctioned militia leader linked to a massacre outside Damascus and another owned by the family members of a businessman who allegedly profited from trading the rubble of buildings shelled by government forces, the study said.

“When humanitarian assistance is systematically abused and distorted, under the pretext of protecting the neutrality of humanitarian operations, it may become a dangerous weapon in the hands of the government against its people,” the report’s authors wrote.

The U.N. has long been known to contract companies linked to the Assad regime, which has overseen a decade-long civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced around seven million to flee their homes.

Click here to read the full report.

U.N. staff have spent tens of millions of dollars staying at the Damascus Four Seasons hotel, which is partly owned by regime-allied businessman Samer Foz, for instance. The United States sanctioned Foz in 2019, saying he had “leveraged the atrocities of the Syrian conflict into a profit-generating enterprise” and was “directly supporting the murderous Assad regime.”

But the new study — published on Tuesday by the London-based Syrian Legal Development Program (SLDP) and the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks (OPEN) — was the first major attempt to analyze just how much U.N. procurement money is going to human rights abusers or figures who are sanctioned or connected to the Assad regime and the conflict.

In total, the United Nations paid out around $406 million in procurement spending in Syria in 2019 and 2020, covering a wide variety of goods and services such as food, accommodation, medical equipment, security, training, IT services, chemicals, and office materials. About $75 million went to companies which were not identified for “privacy reasons” or “security reasons.”

Of the remaining amount, the report analyzed the money that went to the U.N.’s top 100 known suppliers in Syria — and found that about $137 million went to what the report called “high” or “very high” risk companies, including those owned by war profiteers, sanctioned people, and prominent regime allies.

Reporters from OCCRP and its media partner, Syrian Investigative Reporting For Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), assisted with research, were granted advance access to the report, and carried out their own analysis of the U.N. procurement database, which corroborated many of the report’s key findings. They also found examples of problematic disbursements before 2019.

In one of the more striking cases, about $1.4 million in UN funding was also provided to the Syria Trust for Development, a foundation established and run by Syria’s First Lady Asma Al-Assad, in 2015 and 2017, ostensibly for emergency shelter and “non-food items,” according to the U.N. Financial Tracker Service.

Carsten Wieland, a German policy adviser and author of a book about humanitarian aid in the Syrian conflict, expressed alarm at the findings.

“It is very appalling that there has not been sufficient due diligence inside the U.N. where these organizations came from, or are a hidden arm of someone else,” he told OCCRP.

Francesco Galtieri, a senior U.N. official based in Damascus, said that the United Nations provided assistance “with strict adherence to humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, independence, and impartiality.”

He said that internal due diligence procedures had been strengthened over the past two years and that donor states could ask for details of contracts through a formal audit process. The U.N. also continuously reviews allegations and “disengages” if evidence suggests “the involvement of vendors and suppliers in proscribed practices,” he said.

“All U.N. agencies apply diligent effort to ensuring an in-depth understanding of the breadth of factors relevant to conflict sensitivity and due diligence practices in Syria, to ensure that programming and related operational procedures are risk aware and do no harm,” Galtieri told OCCRP.

The Rise of War Profiteers

Syria’s government has maintained a tight grip over the economy for decades, with allies and relatives of the ruling Assad family dominating key sectors such as telecommunications, infrastructure, and real estate.

Since the 2011 uprising and the ensuing civil war, the Syrian regime has become even more reliant on a new class of war profiteers and proxies to help it skirt sanctions and maintain control over its last few remaining sources of foreign currency.

At the same time, Syria has become one of the world’s largest recipients of humanitarian assistance. Since 2011, over $40 billion of aid money has flowed into the country, more than half of that through the U.N., according to researchers.

The SLDP and OPEN study shows that many in the regime’s inner circle have benefited from this influx of cash.

For instance, a company called Desert Falcon LLC, run by pro-regime commander Fadi Ahmad, received over $1 million in 2019 and 2020 from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and its refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, under a variety of categories including “apparel,” “office equipment,” “electronics,” and “manufacturing components.”

In 2012, Ahmad, also known as Fadi Saqr, took command of the pro-government National Defense Forces militia in Damascus. The following year, the militia took part in a massacre of dozens of people in the Syrian capital’s Tadamon district.

Desert Falcon’s co-owner is Bilal Al-Naal, who has been a member of Syrian parliament since 2020. Another company owned by Naal, Al-Naal LLC, received over $1.2 million in funds, also from UNICEF and UNRWA, listed under categories including “apparel,” “paper materials,” and “medical equipment,” the study found.

Another company, Jupiter for Investments SA, which received over half a million dollars from UNICEF for “management and admin services,” is owned by relatives of regime ally Mohammad Hamsho, including four who are under sanctions. Hamsho, who is also sanctioned by the United States and the European Union, has been accused of trading in the rubble from destroyed homes and acting as a front for Assad’s brother, Maher, who heads the army’s elite Fourth Armored Division.

Cham Wings, a Syrian airline sanctioned by the United States, received over half a million dollars from the World Food Program, the study said. The airline was also sanctioned along with its owner and chairman by the European Union for exacerbating the refugee crisis on the borders of Belarus in 2021 and 2022, but the sanctions were lifted earlier this year.

A variety of other companies receiving U.N. funds were linked to the Assad family, including multiple relatives and partners of Assad’s cousin, the sanctioned business tycoon Rami Makhlouf. Many of Makhlouf’s assets were stripped and he was put under house arrest in a conflict with Syrian authorities over the past two years.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press separately reported that staff members at the U.N.’s World Health Organization in Syria had accused their boss of mismanaging millions of dollars and using the agency’s funds to buy gifts for Syrian government officials.

The Report

The influx of foreign currency brought by humanitarian aid spending is a boon for the Syrian government, which has struggled to procure cash amid international sanctions, the collapse of its most productive economic sectors, and a financial crisis in neighboring Lebanon.

U.N. agencies that spend money in Syria are required by the government to exchange currency at the official exchange rate, which is far below the black market rates. Karam Shaar, the co-author of the report, said that in his research he found the U.N. exchanged some $340 million at the official rate in 2020, which was on average 50 percent lower than the black market rate that year.

The differential resulted in $170 million of “diverted” donor money, although it is not exactly clear how or where the government diverted these amounts, he said.

The SLDP and OPEN study analyzed about $294 million in procurement funding, representing the amount that went to the U.N.’s top 100 suppliers in Syria in 2019 and 2020, and including companies that are fully private or those with both public and private shareholders.

Drawing on business directories which rely on the official Syrian gazette, as well as news websites and social media, they divided the suppliers into four levels of risk, based on a guide written by SLDP and Human Rights Watch.

“Very high risk” companies included companies with links to human rights abuses, paramilitary groups, the private security industry, the destruction of civilian property, the development of land where people were forcibly displaced, and support for the Syrian armed forces and government since 2011.

“High risk” included companies which have received Syrian state contracts or held monopolies over certain sectors, were owned by members of parliament or other local officials, had donated to Syrian entities, or taken part in economic blockades of opposition-held areas.

The study found that about 36 percent of the funds it analyzed went to “very high risk” companies, while another 10 percent went to “high risk” companies, 30 percent to “medium,” and 23 percent to “low risk” companies.

Wieland, the policy adviser, said that thorough reform would be needed to get out of the “neutrality trap” and make sure that U.N. money was not going to suppliers like those listed in the report.

“It is something so tricky, and so politically relevant, that it has to come from somebody so far up,” he told OCCRP. “This has not been done. I have not seen any real will to tackle such issues.”

The post Millions in UN Funding Flow to War Profiteers and Human Rights Abusers in Syria, Study Shows appeared first on SIRAJ.

Although tracking data offers no sign of the Kubrosli-y’s whereabouts during that week, photos posted on Facebook by a Syrian government agency two days before its reappearance provide clues to why its crew might have been keen to disguise their location.

One of the images shows Syrian oil and minerals minister Bassam Toumeh at the Mediterranean port of Tartus. Another shows the Kubrosli-y docked at one of two berths at the port that were custom-built to load phosphate, a prized mineral that has been a major economic lifeline for the sanctioned regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria has some of the largest known reserves of the increasingly sought-after fertilizer ingredient. The phosphate industry collapsed when Islamic State militants seized the country’s largest mines in 2015, but production has revived since government forces recaptured them the following year, attracting buyers even from countries opposed to Assad’s regime.

The journey of the Kubrosli-y, and the techniques it deployed, offer a glimpse into the murky supply chain of Syrian phosphates as they make their way from regions torn apart by civil war to farmers across Europe. Every step of the way, the trade enriches the Syrian state, war profiteers, and people with deep ties to Russia’s elite.

Despite the risks of sanctions violations, Serbia, Ukraine, and four European Union states have imported over $80 million worth of Syrian phosphates since 2019, according to a new investigation by OCCRP member centers in seven countries, in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ).

The United States has imposed sanctions on both the Syrian government and the Russian company that appears to control much of Syria’s phosphate exports, Stroytransgaz. The EU has also sanctioned two key players: Syria’s Toumeh and Stroytransgaz’s owner, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire tycoon and close ally of the Kremlin. But neither the U.S. nor the EU specifically prohibit the purchase of Syrian phosphates.

Experts say companies still run the risk of violating sanctions even if the phosphates trade is technically legal. A 2018 report by Politico that Greece was buying Syrian phosphates raised hackles in the European Parliament, and imports stopped soon after.

Even Stroytransgaz has tried to distance itself from the industry, insisting that it has no connection to two similarly named companies that dominate the trade today. But OCCRP and its partners found evidence of several links between Stroytransgaz and these firms.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has also led to increased pressure for European companies to cut ties to sanctioned Russian figures, such as Timchenko.

“Syrian phosphates are very bloody, not only because of the conflict in Syria but also what is happening in Ukraine,” said Glen Kurokawa, a phosphate analyst at commodity research group CRU. “Syria has to sell at a political discount because its goods are so toxic to handle.”

Asked about the imports, the EU Commission said it was up to individual countries to decide whether Syrian phosphate imports break sanctions. Authorities in Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Serbia confirmed they regard the trade as legal. Italian authorities did not reply to requests for comment.

Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist, said the trade shows how easily sanctions can be circumvented by opaque supply chains or by channeling funds and goods through the unknown subsidiaries of targeted companies.

“Of course exporting phosphates to Europe is a violation of sanctions,” he said. “But most of the countries don’t understand the structure of the organizations they have sanctioned.”

In the case of the Kubrosli-y, in the space of just three weeks it had set out from Istanbul, slipped in and out of Syria and sailed back through the Bosphorus to Nika Tera port in Ukraine, owned by a sanctioned oligarch.

“The ship owner doesn’t want anyone to know that his ship is coming from an economically sanctioned country like Syria,” said a Syrian ship captain from Tartous, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Daytona Prime disappeared from AIS systems south of Cyprus while headed in Syria’s direction on Jan. 20, 2019. Satellite images show the ship docked in Tartous two weeks later, where port documents reveal it visited the phosphates berths the following day.

The ship appeared again on AIS south of Cyprus before reaching Romania’s Constanta port on the Black Sea on February 16, the same day that Romanian customs records show a cargo of Syrian phosphates were imported.

Tartous port took most of its recent records offline in June 2020, but more recent phosphate shipments could be identified using open-source and satellite images.

A Honduran-flagged cargo ship called the Sea Navigator disappeared from AIS off the coast of Cyprus on January 4, 2022, and then reappeared heading north before reaching Romania’s Constanta port on January 21. During this time, it appeared in the background of a selfie taken by a worker in the Tartous phosphates berth which was posted to social media.

The International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency that regulates global shipping, requires ships to broadcast AIS positions at all times, so ships with blackouts like these are problematic. That, in combination with the threat of sanctions and bad publicity, leaves European importers of Syrian phosphates working with ship owners on the legal fringes of the industry.

One of these is Aminos Maritime Ltd, which owns the Kubrosli-y, the ship that reporters noticed turning off its tracker in May last year before delivering phosphates to Ukraine. The ship has also made deliveries of Syrian phosphates to Romania and Greece. Aminos did not reply to a request for comment.

Another ship, the Prince Mouhammad, is owned by a Lebanon-based company whose largest shareholder is owned by relatives of Jihad al-Arab, a contractor close to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Last year, Arab was sanctioned by the U.S. for corruption. He did not respond to a request for comment either.

Ibrahim Olabi, a Syrian legal expert who monitors sanctions evasion, said the methods used to dodge sanctions in Syria would likely help Russian companies avoid new sanctions imposed by the European Union and United States over the Ukraine war.

“The Syrian phosphates trade shows why the EU sanctions system is not fit for purpose,” he said. “Sanctions evasion works and it’s not even that difficult.”

The industry’s dubious legality has also given rise to a complex network of proxies and middlemen.

‘Blood Money’

On a busy shopping street in London’s upmarket Kensington neighborhood, a small office above a secondhand clothing store is listed as the address of a British company called Resalper Trading Ltd.

The company sold $450,000 worth of Syrian phosphates to Ukrainian company Prime Organics in August 2020 — the country’s top importer of Syrian phosphates over the past two years — according to Ukrainian customs records. But Resalper Trading reported no financial activities in the year ending in May 2020, and only around $530 in assets that month, according to its most recent filings.

The office in Kensington belongs to formation agents Company Wizard and Quick File. When OCCRP contacted the 29-year-old Ukrainian who founded Resalper Trading in 2019, Ruslan Turkovskyi, he declined to comment.

Ukraine’s imports of Syrian phosphates ballooned from $3 million worth in 2018 to $15 million last year, despite Ukrainian sanctions imposed on Stroytransgaz and Timchenko. Most of those that arrive by sea enter through the Nika Tera port, owned by the sanctioned pro-Moscow oligarch Dmitry Firtash.

Sanctions expert Irene Kenyon, director of risk intelligence at the consultancy FiveBy Solutions, said using shell companies is a common strategy to disguise the fact that sanctioned entities or individuals were benefiting from a trade.

“Even though you might be legally in the right, you’re also giving blood money to a sanctioned human-rights violating regime and a sanctioned Russian oligarch,” she said.

Europe Quietly Resumed Syrian Phosphate Imports

Serbia and Ukraine are Europe’s top buyers of Syrian phosphates, while several EU states have also resumed imports.

Ukraine’s imports halted after the Russian invasion in February, but the country is far from the only buyer of Syrian phosphates.

In Serbia — Europe’s top buyer of Syrian phosphates in recent years — one importer was a former beauty company called Yufofarm. A Serbian business registry shows the company imported $26.9 million worth of products from Syria in 2021, though it did not specify what they were. Yufofarm declined to comment.

Yufofarm is owned by the business partner of Stanko Popovic, whose agriculture and fertilizer company, Elixir Group bought the Syrian phosphates Yufofarm imported. Elixir Group is the exclusive supplier of phosphoric acid — used to make fertilizers and animal feed — for the local operations of a major French conglomerate called Groupe Roullier.

“If the person you’re buying cargo from isn’t under sanctions then you’re further removed and aren’t necessarily busting sanctions yourself,” a maritime lawyer told OCCRP, speaking anonymously as they were not authorized to talk to the press. “This is the trade version of international money laundering.”

A spokesperson for the French company said it did “not use Syrian phosphate” and strictly complied with all sanctions.

Popovic acknowledged buying Syrian phosphates, which he had done since the 1970s, but told reporters that all his business transactions were legal. “We do not cooperate with any company in Syria on the basis of phosphate imports, or on any other basis,” he said.

Although Greece appeared to have stopped importing Syrian phosphates after the 2018 Politico report, at least four other EU member states — Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, and Poland — quietly resumed imports, OCCRP and its partners found. EU and UN trade data show that Italy started importing in 2020, Bulgaria in 2021, and Spain and Poland earlier this year.

Many of the EU’s imports of Syrian phosphates entered the bloc through Romania. Most of them were handled by two Middle Eastern companies, UAE-registered Blue Gulf Trading and Lebanon-registered Medsea Trading, both of which are owned by Lebanese businessman Afif Nazih Auf. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In Italy, Syrian phosphates are imported by Puccioni Spa, an established Italian fertilizer company. The company confirmed the purchases, but said it dealt with Syrian authorities through a broker, and that it did not work with Stroytransgaz.

In Bulgaria, Syrian phosphates are imported by a small Bulgarian company called Fertix EOOD, which was founded in 2017. Fertix’s managing director, Radostin Radev, has deep connections in Bulgaria’s agriculture industry, after starting his career at Agropolychim, one of the biggest fertilizer producers in the Balkans.

Radev said he had sold some of the Syrian phosphates to EuroChem Agro Bulgaria, a subsidiary of Eurochem Group AG, which is connected to Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. Melnichenko, who was sanctioned by the EU and the U.K. for supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine, recently withdrew from the company’s board.

For now, the trade in Syrian phosphates appears to be growing in spite of the many political complexities. Sergiy Moskalenko, director of Dnipro Mineral Fertilizer Plant, a Ukrainian firm that uses Syrian phosphates, told OCCRP that for them the purchases were a practical matter.

“Look, we need to eat,” he said. “In order to eat properly we need to supply the soil with fertilizers and to do this we must purchase the raw materials. To buy them, we unfortunately turn to…” He paused. “We take whatever phosphates are offered to us.”

Eva Constantaras (Lighthouse Reports), Hala Naserddine, (Daraj), Adam Chamseddine (Al Jadeed TV), Hervé Chambonniere (Le Telegramme), Ahmad Haj Hamdo, Ayman Makieh and Ahmad Obaid (SIRAJ) contributed reporting.

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