IDF: Yasser Arafat's personal assets worth $1.3 billion

Hackers uncover secret billions of Arafat's PLO

London Sunday Telegraph, December 5, 1999
By Tom Gross in Jerusalem

Was Congress aware of the following London Sunday Telegraph data, while appropriating $400 million foreign aid to the PLO, in addition to the $500 million already transferred to the PLO?! Should Congress tolerate the transfer of the $400 million to the PLO before the GAO establishes transparency of PLO accounts, including Arafat's own bank accounts?!

Just like the most corrupt rulers in the Third World, so does Arafat plunder his own people, while expanding his own personal financial holdings. Shouldn't Congress MANDATE that foreign aid to the PLO be withheld until the GAO audit is concluded, including Arafat's personal bank account?!!!

THE Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has salted away billions of pounds for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in secret foreign bank accounts and investments, including property in London.

The disclosure about the hidden wealth of his PLO comes amid deepening economic hardship in his Gaza and West Bank fiefdoms. It will also hamper his efforts to woo a huge influx of European aid for his fledgling Palestinian regime.

The timing of the disclosures could not have been more embarrassing as Mr Arafat, seated before a stage built to resemble a giant Christmas crib, yesterday opened Millennium celebrations in Bethlehem. He hopes that the year of festivities in Jesus's birthplace will showcase his push for an independent Palestinian state.

New details of the vast PLO fortune he controls have come to light following a series of computer break-ins at the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Tunis.

The hackers discovered that the PLO maintains about £5 billion in numbered bank accounts in Zurich, Geneva and New York. It also holds accounts with smaller sums in north Africa, Europe and Asia. They are not registered in the PLO's name, but in the names of private individuals.
The records also showed that the PLO owns shares on the Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo stock exchanges, including stock in the German car giant Mercedes Benz, and property in prestigious areas of European capitals, including Mayfair in London.

The organisation, which once specialised in aircraft hijackings, also has shares in several airlines, including the national carriers of the Maldives and Guinea Bissau. The computer security breach is believed on the West Bank to have been carried out by PLO officials disgruntled with Mr Arafat's leadership. "They wished to dispel the smokescreen created around the PLO's finances," a Palestinian official told The Telegraph.

Mr Arafat has always refused to comment on reports about the foreign bank accounts. But the disclosures caused anger in poverty-stricken Gaza. One embittered Palestinian said:
"Why is he sitting on a mountain of gold, while there is a desperate lack of jobs and medical supplies here?"

Mr Arafat is both president of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous organisation that governs parts of Gaza and the West Bank, and the chairman of the PLO, which maintains its headquarters in Tunis, its base during its terrorist heyday.

The creation of the Palestinian Authority, the embryonic government for a future Palestinian state, was supposed to lead to the winding-up of the PLO - and make the Palestinian leadership accountable and law-abiding. But the authority has in fact been repeatedly accused by domestic opponents of rampant corruption and mismanagement.

The web of secret bank accounts and assets held around the world is believed to be so complex that only Mr Arafat himself and two of his most trusted aides know the overall picture. Much of the money is the result of "taxes" levied on Palestinians working in Kuwait and other Gulf states in the Seventies and Eighties, and of donations from wealthy states such as Saudi Arabia.

The assets are controlled by Mr Arafat himself and it is not known what would happen to them if the 70-year-old, who is said to be suffering from Parkinson's disease, should die. An Israeli intelligence analyst said:

"These revelations are almost certainly not the whole story. No one can know the full extent of the PLO's assets. They are so well hidden."

The disclosures are also likely to prompt international donors, including the European Union countries, to ask why Mr Arafat is still demanding aid for his Palestinian authority. Nor will they have been impressed by his decision to invite Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president, to Bethlehem.

Notice the date on this article, 1999. Who was president?

The PLO no longer receives this money from us. From the Euro trash countries, yes!

Go to this link to see how Arafat has devastated the economy and personal wealth of the average PA, while he and his Islamakazi Cronies become billionaires: (link to Arafat's economic destruction of the PA's)

It is true that per-capita income in the PA has dropped from US$2,000 to US$1,400 and that unemployment has quadrupled from 11% to 45%. However, this depressing slide started months before Ariel Sharon's government imposed travel and financial restrictions on the PA. It began in earnest last summer, when the PA initiated the intifada after Mr. Arafat decided he could gain more through violence than painstaking negotiation.

The endemic corruption of the Arafat regime -- evidence of which even the PA-controlled press cannot hide any longer -- is also greatly to blame. Only two weeks ago, the European Union announced it would "closely monitor" funds it transfers to the PA so that they do not disappear. Even the Arab countries are opting not to give money directly to Mr. Arafat, but instead prefer to establish projects under their own supervision. Mr. Arafat's personal wealth, accumulated by shifting donations to the PLO into his private bank accounts, is estimated to be worth billions of dollars.

Given these circumstances, it would make sense for the Palestinians to call off the intifada and return to the negotiating table. But that is not what Mr. Arafat and his advisors want. In fact, Mr. Arafat prefers keeping his fiefdom poor and rowdy to gain international sympathy. In an op-ed piece published earlier this month, Natan Sharansky, the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, made this point clear. "As minister of industry and trade during Benjamin Netanyahu's administration," he wrote, "I saw Mr. Arafat reject countless projects that would have bettered the lot of his own people simply because they would have served to decrease tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. He continually spurned my efforts to help the Palestinian Authority establish an industrial park in Gaza that would have encouraged investment in Palestinian areas, created tens of thousands of jobs, and alleviated poverty. Similarly, he rejected a proposal to create joint ventures in the West Bank in existing industrial zones that would have fostered co-operation between Jews and Arabs and generously redistributed municipal tax revenues to depressed Palestinian areas." ===========================================================

Arafat and Je$$e Jack$on and Al $harpton are the same creatures, who feed off of their poor brethren while working 24/7 to keep them poor. That way they can skim off the dollars that come in to "help" the down trodden. Only the down trodden never get any money.

Time to kill Arafat and all of his chronies, then divide up that money to pay back to Israel the damages done. Then take the rest to help the good PA's to start a new life without the Islamakazis destroying their economic lives.

The left wing mediots of America and the World, like the NY Slimes, are responsible for spiking the truth about Arafat and trying to blame the problem on the Israelis. They are more guilty than Arafat and his chronies in spiking and hiding the reality of Arafat.

How much blood money has flowed into the pockets of the left wing mediots in America the past 2 decades from the Islamakazis?

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