Corruption in the Abbas Family?

Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images

Corruption in the Abbas Family?

New details have emerged on how close family members of the Palestinian Authority president have become rich at the expense of the Palestinian people and even the U.S. taxpayer.

Foreign Policy reported on Tuesday that the sons of Mahmoud Abbas are growing rich off their father’s system. The latest charges have come from Mohammed Rachid, an economic adviser to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is himself facing charges of corruption. Rachid claims that Abbas has pocketed $100 million illegally.

For several years, there has been controversy over the excessive wealth of Abbas’s two sons, who have personally benefited from several business deals, including some funded by U.S. taxpayers. The two sons between them own or control numerous multimillion-dollar companies—reportedly including a company that holds a monopoly on U.S.-made cigarettes in the Palestinian territories and an international engineering company—some of which have received hundreds of thousands of dollars of U.S. aid. It seems evident that this success has come by virtue of their family connections. The Abbas family also reportedly owns luxury properties worth more than $20 million in Gaza, Jordan, Qatar, Ramallah, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign Policy writer Jonathan Schanzer reports that Palestinians know of the Abbas family empire, but are hesitant to voice their concern out of fear of retribution by PA security officers. A public opinion poll carried out back in 2010 found that only a quarter of Palestinians in the West Bank believe they can criticize the Palestinian Authority.

The PA is among the world’s leading per capita recipients of international funding, but over the years much of that has been siphoned off for corrupt officials. From the time of Arafat’s decades-long dictatorial rule, Palestinian leaders have consistently kept down their own people, essentially using them as a weapon against Israel in the court of public opinion. The Abbas family wealth is just another part of this picture.