Where Did Tens of Millions of Dollars of Palestinian Assets Disappear To?

The Fatah central committee convened recently to discuss the disappearance during the 1970s of huge sums of the organization's money and other holdings. The discussions followed a complaint on the matter before the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

The issue involves tens of millions of dollars of assets, according to various estimates, that Fatah's chairman, Yasser Arafat, transferred to dozens of activists because the organization was not allowed to register ownership of the assets in Fatah's name at the time.

Each received $2 million to $3 million in cash or real estate of various kinds, that were registered in the recipients' names.

The real estate was located in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and several other locations around the Arab world. Over the years, however, many of the activists who received the organization's wealth purportedly "forgot" to report what they had. The financial management of Fatah at the time was primarily in the hands of Arafat himself, and there is almost no documentation regarding what was distributed and to whom.

Some of the assets were bequeathed by the recipients to their children, and traces of the wealth over the years have virtually disappeared. Fatah sources say some of the property was listed in the name of Farouk Kaddoumi, the former diplomatic chief of the PLO, who was a rival of current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Fatah central committee convened an investigative panel that began to look into the matter, and the panel has come up with preliminary conclusions. The anticipated publication of the recipients of the assets in the 1970s is expected to engender a fierce reaction within Fatah and beyond.

Several months ago, Channel 10 television disclosed the manner in which the assets disappeared, based on documents provided by Fahmi Shabaneh, who was the Palestinian intelligence official responsible for combating corruption. The publication of the names of those who received the assets may be an indication that Fatah intends to avoid responsibility for the corruption that was so endemic in the organization in the past.