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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (14029)	3/1/2003 1:59:58 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 25898

'Forbes': Arafat Worth $300M. \| February 28, 2003 \| NEW YORK--Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat made Forbes magazine's list of the world richest people in a new category reserved for kings, queens, and despots. With a personal fortune of at least $300 million stashed away in Swiss banks, Arafat is featured in Forbes special annual issue on the world's top 500 billionaires. Arafat placed No. 6 on a list of world leaders in the "kings, queens, and despots" category. Saudi Arabia's King Fahd topped the list at $20 billion, and Saddam Hussein was fourth with $2b. Forbes wrote that Arafat has "feasted on all sorts of funds flowing into the PA, including aid money, Israeli tax transfers, and revenue from a casino and Coca-Cola bottler. Much of the money appears to have gone to pay off others. New Finance Minister Salaam Fayad is cleaning up the PA's finances, cutting off much of Arafat's cash flow." The Forbes figure is modest in comparison to other estimates of Arafat's riches. In a briefing delivered last August to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon (Farkash) Ze'evi reported his net worth at $1.3b. In 1990, the CIA reportedly estimated that Arafat and the PLO had between $8b. and $14b. worth of assets at their disposal. In 1995, the US General Accounting Office compiled a report on Arafat's finances, but it was kept secret due to "national security interests." Kept off the official billionaires list because, according to the accompanying text, "they don't exactly represent success stories of entrepreneurial capitalism," Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and Fidel Castro, worth $110m., made it onto the list of rogue rich instead. The section features a two-page spread titled "Auditing Arafat," which surmises he "may be brought to heel by, of all things, honest financial accounting."