Background/ A Who's Who of corruption in Arafat's Palestine
By Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent 29 July 2004
www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=457320

From the start, the intifada was an uprising with two targets.

The first goal, that of winning Palestinian statehood by force, now seems
more distant than at any time in more than a decade.

The second, that of rooting out pervasive corruption within Yasser Arafat's
Palestinian Authority, may yet prove even harder to attain.

In the eyes of much of the world, the long spasm of Palestinian violence was
fueled solely by fury over occupation. But the bottomless well of rage also
tapped years of grass-roots resentment over graft in the Authority, which in
the eyes of its constituency had sapped, diverted, misspent and squirreled
away fortunes; funds which could have helped meet the humanitarian needs of
more than three million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

How widespread is corruption in the PA, and how deeply rooted?

Murky overlays of complex and questionable bookkeeping have stymied efforts
to follow the money trails that crisscross Arafat's Authority.

There is also a firewall of secrecy shielding Arafat's much-rumored Second
Treasury, or slush fund, believed to be the central vehicle for largesse and
the loyalty it underwrites.

The fund, said to total nearly a half billion dollars, is thought to be used
to pay senior PA officials multiple salaries for non-existent government
positions; to finance villas, vacations and even lavish weddings for PA
brass and their children; and, through intermediaries, pay for the violent
operations of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs and other armed groups.

The same lack of transparency that has made it all but impossible to prove
allegations of graft, has also reinforced the popular perception that the
entire senior leadership is on the take, with the signal exception of one
man whose ascetic, breathing-martyr lifestyle has no room for mammon, Yasser
Arafat himself.

The picture is further darkened, and Palestinian ire deepened, by the fact
that in several cases, the closer the contact that PA officials have had
with Israel, the wider their range of options for graft, including bribes
paid to lubricate the process of obtaining crucial permits from both the
Jewish state and the Palestinian state in the making.

The following is a selected Who's Who of perceived corruption in the
Authority.

GENERAL MUSA ARAFAT

Cousin of the PA chairman, Musa Arafat is seen by many Palestinians as one
of the two most corrupt officials in the Authority.

Much of the current rage at Musa Arafat stems from his past association with
Kamal Hamad, once considered the most senior collaborator with Israel in the
Gaza Strip.

The charges recall allegations that Musa Arafat collaborated with Jordanian
officials during the Hashemite kingdom's bloody1970 Black September
operation to drive out the PLO.

In apparent exchange for a pardon Hamad received from Yasser Arafat over
collaboration charges, Hamad is reported to have given land to the early
Palestinian Authority. Hamad is also believed to have given Musa Arafat a
free apartment in one of the buildings Hamad owns in the Strip.

Later, Hamad is thought to have returned to aiding Israeli security
authorities, particularly in the 1996 killing of Hamas suicide bomb
mastermind Yihyeh Ayyash.

According to Hamad's nephew, Osama, a Hamas activist who had been sheltering
the bombmaker in his apartment at the time of the assassination, Kamal Hamad
had given him the cellular phone packed with explosives that blew up when
Ayyash answered a call, decapitating the man Palestinians had hailed as the
Engineer.

This month, Yasser Arafat touched off a brushfire revolt in Gaza when - in a
move ostensibly made for the sake of reform - he responded to the brief
kidnapping of Gaza's police chief by naming Musa Arafat as head of General
Security, a new agency which put Musa in charge of the PA's 23,000-25,000
armed regulars, in effect, the Palestinian army.

PRIME MINISTER AHMED QUREIA

A cement company owned by Qureia's family is alleged to have sold large
quantities of cement for use in construction of West Bank settlements as
well as for wall segments of the separation fence, including the tall
concrete slabs which cut through Qureia's home town - and the company's
base - Abu Dis.

Shortly before the allegations were made public, Qureia had transferred
ownership of the company to a relative - a move that only deepened
suspicions among his accusers.

The Palestinian cement industry has come under particular scrutiny by PA
legislators attempting to probe corruption suspicions.

Israel has imposed tough restrictions on the cement trade in the
territories - but has relaxed the curbs for a select number of businessmen.
In Gaza, for example, cement merchants close to ex-security official
Mohammed Dahlan - the highest-profile voice for PA reforms - are said to
receive preferential treatment by Israeli authorities, thus ensuring vastly
enhanced profits.

BRIGADIER GENERAL GHAZI JABALI

Chief of Palestinian Police in the Gaza Strip since 1994. Viewed by some as
Arafat's "enforcer" to curb dissidents. Fired several times, for corruption
among other charges, repeatedly reinstated by Arafat.

Trusted by the PA chairman but by few others, Jabali is profoundly unpopular
among Palestinians and is viewed as one of the most corrupt of all PA
officials.

This month, in the latest of a series of attacks against Jabali, armed
militants fought a gun battle with his bodyguards, kidnapping him briefly.
Parading him through a refugee camp, they publicly accused him of stealing
as much as $22 million in PA monies.

FOREIGN MINISTER NABIL SHAATH

Shaath is suspected of having used his position, mobility, and contacts as
the PA's longtime minister of planning and international cooperation in
order to increase his sizable wealth and his business interests across the
Arab world.
As early as 1997, the Palestinian Legislative Council took the rare step of
publicly demanding that Shaath be sacked, brought to trial for gross
corruption, and sentenced to prison. The PLC was acting in response to a
report by the Palestinian State Controller, who found that nearly half of
the PA's $326 million 1997 budget had been "lost through corruption or
financial mismanagement." The next year an official PLC commission of
inquiry into Shaath's dealings declared that it had found evidence of
criminal corruption.

In the end, Shaath, a key peace negotiator, stayed on in his post. Last
year, when Mahmoud Abbas became prime minister, he promoted Shaath to
foreign minister.

SUHA ARAFAT

In February, French prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into
millions of dollars in transfers from an unnamed "Swiss institution" into
two separate Paris bank accounts held by Yasser Arafat's wife Suha, who
lives in the French capital with the couple's daughter and Suha's mother,
Raymonda Tawil.

The location of Suha Arafat's residence has been kept secret, but media
reports have said the three occupied an entire floor at the posh Bristol
Hotel. The hotel has denied the reports.

Apart from the alleged transfers, she reportedly receives some $100,000 a
month from the Palestinian Authority treasury.
The French investigation is focusing in its initial stage on transfers
totalling nine million euros, or $11.5 million, to accounts at the Arab Bank
and the Banque Nationale de Paris in the name of Suha Arafat, made over the
period of a year beginning in June 2002.

In September last year, the International Monetary Fund made public the
results of a special audit of PA financial practices. IMF senior auditor
Karim Nashashibi charged that as much as $900m had been diverted between
1995 and 2000 into "a special account controlled by Yasser Arafat".

The IMF report also found that a total of $74 million had been earmarked for
Yasser Arafat's office, but that there was no explanation for the intended
uses of the allocation.

REFORMERS UNDER SUSPICION

There are also indications that several Palestinian figures in the forefront
of demands for PA reform have in the recent past been on the receiving end
of substantial sums of a questionable nature.

One of the two men often cited in this regard is Dahlan, the sharply
tailored national security chief under Abbas, who had extensive contacts
with Israeli officials in his former roles as a lead peace negotiator on
security issues and as head of the Preventative Security Service in the Gaza
Strip, the agency charged with heading off terror attacks against Israelis.

Asked where he obtained the wherewithal to purchase the luxurious home of
onetime Gaza City mayor and wealthy landowner Rashid Shawwa for a reported
$600,000, Dahlan told a reporter that the price had actually been $400,000,
and that the funds had all been granted him according to bylaws set down by
the Fatah movement.

There is also the case of former negotiator and ex-PA minister of
information Nabil Amr, shot twice in the leg at his home in Ramallah last
week, minutes after having returned from a television interview during which
he criticized Arafat's Authority for unwillingness to reform.

Commented one Palestinian source, comparing Amr's spacious residence to the
small, spartan apartment of jailed Fatah West Bank leader Marwan Barghouthi:
"Amr waited until he built his villa and married off his daughter, all on
funds given him by Arafat, before setting out on his crusade against
corruption."