Steve...The Canadian connection....
CIA finds Arafat's $1.9bn fortune
By PETER ANAV in Jerusalem
22nov04
theadvertiser.news.com.au
THE late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat controlled a network of companies, investments and bank accounts with a value totalling at least $1.9 billion, according to the Austrian business magazine Format.
Quoting a Central Intelligence Agency report, it said yesterday the CIA had conducted inquiries after receiving information that a holding company of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation had invested $11.6 million in a small pharmaceutical company in the Canadian town of Belleville, Ontario.
Format said investigators had "stepped on an anthill" when they uncovered the stake held by the Palestinian Commercial Service Corporation in Bioniche Life Sciences.
They uncovered a whole network of PLO funds such as Chalcedony, Onyx, Evergreen, SilverHaze and Avmax International, the latter based on the Caribbean island Aruba.
The magazine said it had seen a file "detailing in concrete terms for the first time how much money was involved".
The financial network was alleged to have been run by Arafat.
Format said between 1998 and the Palestinian uprising of 2000, an Austrian bank and a group called Casino Austria financed a gambling casino frequented by Israelis at Jericho on the West Bank.
It also alleged Arafat controlled $1.03 billion in bank accounts in Austria, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
Arafat's nephew yesterday arrived in Paris from Cairo to pick up the deceased leader's medical records. Nasser al-Qidwa, who was accompanied by the Palestinian Authority's representative in France, Leila Shahid, did not make any statement.
Arafat's death has caused speculation, controversy and continuing mystery.
He was admitted to a Paris hospital on October 29 and died on November 11.
However, his cause of death has not yet been revealed.
Late on Friday, lawyers for Arafat's widow Suha said she had been given her husband's medical file and had left for her second home in Tunisia.
Mrs Arafat, invoking French medical confidentiality laws, has kept a tight grip on information relating to her husband's treatment during his last days. |
