Did you ever wonder just how much Arafat stands to lose if the conflict even slows down?
How much does he have now? Depending on which source you look at it varies - at the lowest end it is one helluva lot of money!
At the high end!!! The sky is the limit.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/986307/posts
An audit of the Palestinian Authority revealed that President Yasser Arafat had diverted US$900 million in public funds to a special bank account he controlled and most of the money was later invested in Palestinian assets, an International Monetary Fund official said Saturday.
Karim Nashashibi, IMF resident representative in the West Bank and Gaza, credited openness and transparency in the Palestinian Authority's accounting under Finance Minister Salam Fayad for disclosing the transfers between 1995 and 2000.
The large majority of the money was invested in Palestinian assets at home and abroad, Nashashibi said. A Palestinian Investment Fund was established to manage those assets and privatize them, he added.
http://www.insignificantthoughts.com...es/000514.html
At a time when the Palestinian people need it the most, Arafat is hoarding cash to the tune of $1.3 billion US. That's billion. With a B. Poor Arafat who can't bear to see the plight of the Palestinian people has a personal fortune that rivals some of the richest people in most industrialized nations.
Here's a taste of some disturbing statistics:
Arafat's wealth is held in bank accounts, real estate and other assets that can easily be made liquid.
The bank accounts are spread about in Europe, Arab countries, the Far East - and even the United States - under different companies controlled by Arafat.
Arafat has made some of his top deputies, including Abu Ala, Abu Mazen and Nabil Shaath, very rich.
"Arafat took care of his closest aides. Some of them have tens of millions of dollars," one source said.
The main source of Arafat's wealth is believed to be the approximately $6 billion contributed by the United States, Japan and European countries as financial aid to the authority from 1993 to 2000, sources said.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Dail...002081603.html
Israel: Arafat's personal wealth is $ 3.1 billion
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 8/16/2002
Israeli parliamentary sources on Wednesday quoted the chairman of the Israeli military intelligence Gen. Aharon Zeafi saying that the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat owns a fortune estimated at $ 3.1 billion.
Zeafi who submitted a report to the defense and foreign affairs committee in the Israeli Knesset said that Arafat's economic advisor Muhammad Rasheed "has almost organized the calculations of the Palestinian authority," but he could not succeed in halting "the imports monopolies in ( the Palestinian territories) which constitutes the source of Arafat's personal revenues