The Art Deco mansion at 47 rue Paris in Bucharest is never going to be cheap, measures more than a thousand square meters, is located in a privileged domain of diplomats and built by the legendary Romanian engineer Emil Prager in 1933.
But that caught the eye in the Romanian capital when white stone construction took a million euros in less than a week in 2009.
Moreover, the mansion passed into the hands of a widowed pensioner living in a communist-era social housing block in southwestern Bucharest. Leana Pielmus, then 58, bought it on September 10 for 3. 5 million euros (equivalent to $5 million). The average pension in Romania at the time was EUR 162 consistent with the month.
Pielmus sold it a week later to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 4. 46 million euros ($6. 6 million), according to sales contracts received through newshounds from occRP partners RISE Project and SIRAJ.
The agreement, which has never been reported in the main media, was negotiated through his son-in-law, Ammar Aoun, a dentist who tells the Syrian ambassador to Romania among his friends.
“The user who bought and sold the assets to the Syrian is related to a close friend of the ambassador,” said Romania-based Syrian dissident Mohamad Rifai, also a dentist.
“He didn’t have millions in his bank account, it’s not a genuinely known real estate agency, and a lot of cash came in and out of his bank account overnight. “
In the wake of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in Damascus in March 2011, the European Union imposed sanctions on the Syrian strong man and his close collaborators, who are still on site. Romania is one of the few EU countries that nevertheless maintained diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime the resulting civil war.
Dissidents like Rifai claim that Bucharest has a European center for Assad’s illicit currency networks and his wealthy cousin, Rami Makhlouf, who is married to the syrian ambassador’s daughter.
This ambassador, Walid Othman, is one of Assad’s closest collaborators. He has been in his diplomatic post in Romania for thirteen years, and has surpassed the mandatory retirement age of 65 years. In 2012, Reuters quoted a former Syrian oil minister as saying that Othman was “one of the other people doing business on behalf of the Assad family,” he may simply not provide concrete evidence of that claim.
The dentist who negotiated the deal with the embassy, Ammar Aoun, told the middle member of OCCRP’s RISE Project that he was guilty of the acquisition made through his retired mother-in-law, as well as the early sale of the construction to the Syrian Embassy in nearly 30 years percent increase.
“I’ve done it all, ” he said, Why a Romanian citizen what’s going on at the Syrian embassy?”
The dentist declined to comment on his $ 1 million benefit and did not say why his mother-in-law was on the paperwork, but admitted that he had earned far more than that from the Syrian embassy over the years.
“I charged 10 million, a million and what, am I allowed? I made 10 million, I made between 10 and 15 million. They gave me a commission. “
A few hours after the interview, Aoun texted the journalist.
“Good night, I regret the tone of the discussion we had today. The subject is old, legal and closed. Good luck in your efforts to treat this issue with kindness. “
Ambassador Othman and Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to say that the agreement complied with public procurement regulations or that the Syrian government had investigated the possible clash of interests.
Romania’s Foreign Ministry said consultation on how the Syrian embassy was purchased was not within its jurisdiction, but Camelia Bogdan, a Romanian money laundering judge, said the operation had sounded the alarm that was reported to the authorities.
“Obviously, there are symptoms of caution of money laundering through the genuine equity formula (e. g. lack of monetary justification, invoices through an agent who may not justify the legal origin of the funds) that have been treated through the notary who legalized the fraudulent scheme through improved due diligence in accordance with LBC’s obligations” , he wrote to reporters.
“In this case, the notary had a duty to identify the actual beneficiary and submit a suspicious transaction to the FRC (financial intelligence unit). “
Romania and Syria have had close diplomatic relations since Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime. The former communist dictator had a warm date with Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron hand for nearly 3 decades.
The Syrian army relied in part on Romanian weapons to equip its soldiers. Damascus was also a major importer of Romanian livestock, timber and other products before the EU imposed sanctions on Syria in 2011.
Hundreds of Syrians arrived in Romania in the 1980s, when Ceausescu awarded scholarships to academics from the socialist state, and many stayed as doctors and engineers or setting up business.
Ammar Aoun among them. She studied dentistry in Bucharest and married a Romanian woman with who she now runs a dental clinic.
“Those who arrived before 1990 were generally academics in medicine, dentistry or polytechnics,” said an NGO worker in Bucharest who spent years helping Syrian communities and other immigrant communities and spoke under anonymity because she forbids workers from speaking to the press.
“They stayed here, won Romanian citizenship and very influential entrepreneurs. They have hotel chains, football teams, restaurants. “
All of this was replaced in 2011, when the 5,000-strong Syrian-Romanian network was torn apart due to the outbreak of civil war.
“Overnight, some Syrian enemies of the regime,” the aid clerk said.
Others, such as Aoun, doubled its value to the Assad government, joining another businessman to donate a van to the embassy. Your Facebook profile is full of quotes from the Assad regime and your friend the ambassador.
“The sun of a beautiful day rises . . . and nothing makes you happier than love and loyalty!”he wrote in a typical article at the end of September: “A morning full of loyalty and love for Syria, a land of glory, and His Excellency Dr. Walid Othman. “
A month after negotiating the deal with the embassy, Aoun was involved in a money laundering case involving Syrian-Romanian businessman Yakhni Abdulkader.
The case began when Abdulkader’s wife left for Turkey with $769,000 hidden in her purse, according to court documents.
Abdulkader called Aoun and asked to evade customs officials at Bucharest airport. Aoun told Abdulkader that he would check if “the user he knows is there,” according to the indictment documents.
But the money was confiscated and Abdulkader was tried and convicted of organized crime and money laundering. Prosecutors accused him of his wife, among other traffickers, laundering money for a network of criminals operating in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. . Abdulkader washed up to $3. 5 million between September 2009 and January 2010, according to court records.
Aoun called as a witness in the case, but insisted that his only role was to present abdulkader as a lawyer.
Aoun is also a Facebook friend of Haytham A. Asaad, a Syrian-Romanian businessman who owns shares in a company that bought internal land from a Romanian army base used through NATO infantry in an agreement revealed through the OCCRP and the allocation of RISE in 2018. Othman’s son, the company’s main shareholder.
Othman was born in 1953 in a mountain village overlooking the coastal town of Latakia, the seat of the assad ruling family.
And like the Assads, Othman is part of the harsh Alawite minority, which has ruled Syrian politics since Hafez al-Assad took strength in 1971.
He began his career as a member of the ruling Baath Party in Syria, with the task of recruiting other young people to join. In the 1990s, he was governor of the city of Dara’a, on Syria’s southern border with Jordan. His daughter, Razan, married Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, consolidating ties between the two families.
Makhlouf, an entrepreneur who controlled more than 60% of Syria’s economy before the war broke out in 2011, is being sanctioned across the European Union and the United States for its role in government corruption and financing of the Assad regime. sanctions, his father is not.
In 2007, Assad appointed Othman as Syria’s ambassador to Romania. In turn, Othman remained a supporter of the president, even sided with him when he faced Makhlouf this year.
“Walid Othman is part of an ambassadorial organization very close to the ruling family,” said Saker Elmelhem, a former Syrian ambassador to Chile who resigned in 2013 in protest at what he saw as an increase in sectarianism and corruption within foreign countries. Ministry.
Elmelhem and the former high-ranking diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, described Othman and a handful of others sent to Assad’s inner circle as “the regime’s neck bone. “
“This organization operates above Syria and regulations,” Elmelhem said. “Their terms are protracted and they can sell and buy all of Syria. “
Most of these envoys come from prominent Alawite families who have ties within Syria’s ubiquitous security apparatus, the country’s true power intermediaries.
“Even President Assad dares not approach them,” Elmelhem said. “This context is helping to acquire the embassy and how Othman has maintained his position over the years in Romania. “
Under Syrian law, Othman retired two years ago when he turned 65, but Assad has renewed his post, perhaps because the appointment of a new envoy can cause problems for Romania, which approves the appointment and actively verifies its agreement with Syria. .
While many European states expelled Syria’s ambassadors after the Assad regime’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in 2011, Romania did not. Instead, the two countries have increased security around the embassy at 47 Paris Street, which has the site of normal protests through local Syrians who oppose Assad.
Dr. Rifai, the dissident, said the construction of the embassy for him was a symbol of corruption and wasta, the Arabic word for internal relations.
“We Syrians who belong to humanity . . . we think this is an embassy that doesn’t give us any form of protection,” he said.