From Damascus to Rublyovka: How dictator Assad and his family syndicate used offshore accounts, fake passports, and banks to launder millions, buy the elite, and live under the Kremlin’s “protection”

From Damascus to Rublyovka: How dictator Assad and his family syndicate used offshore accounts, fake passports, and banks to launder millions, buy the elite, and live under the Kremlin’s “protection”

Journalists examined various leaked data about how and when members of Bashar al-Assad’s family prepared a springboard for their escape to Moscow. The family of the ousted Syrian president has long had ties to Russia: both the dictator’s father and his eldest son studied there.

Now, the country has become the new home for all the Assads, their relatives, as well as the former president’s security guards, translators, drivers, and other staff.

For example, several Syrian-born individuals legalized their status in Russia as translators: they were issued passports through the embassy and registered in the Tula and Voronezh regions. All of them are identified by phone numbers written in Arabic and based on the names of Bashar al-Assad’s family members.

Some were also seen driving cars belonging to the former president’s close associates. For example, Hafez Makhlouf (the name spelled this way in Russia), the former head of the Damascus branch of the Syrian General Directorate of Security, was seen driving a black Porsche Cayenne. The colonel is Bashar al-Assad’s cousin.

In March 2015, Hafez Makhlouf personally acquired non-residential premises 605M on the 60th floor of one of the towers at 8 Presnenskaya Embankment, Building 1, with an area of almost 220 square meters. Initially, Bashar al-Assad’s brother owned two parking spaces, but over time these proved insufficient—he purchased additional spaces in 2021.

In addition to the 11 office spaces (the total area of property 605M), by September of that year, the security official and Assad’s brother had already taken possession of an apartment in a clubhouse on Klimashkina Street (near Ulitsa 1905 Goda), measuring over 300 square meters. The colonel’s children are also registered at this address. This appears to be the new home of the Makhlouf family. Hafez also owns a garage there. In October, he also became the owner of another, smaller apartment (74 square meters) in a building on Beregovoy Proyezd.

Meanwhile, leaked documents from those years indicate that Hafez Makhlouf holds Azerbaijani citizenship and received 170,000 rubles in income from MKB, whose main shareholder, Roman Avdeev, headed the Rossium concern, which purchased the office space from the Syrians in Moscow City.

Other assets were managed by Nasser Bassam, one of the Syrian businessmen who legalized his identity (he received a passport through the embassy in 2018 and then through the Tula Regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2021). Journalists have linked him to Hafez Makhlouf, but the Arabic signature on his phone number indicates he belongs to another relative of Bashar al-Assad—his cousin Rami Makhlouf, long considered Syria’s richest businessman.

Nasser Bassam leads an active public and business life: he rides a scooter and competes in chess tournaments (in 2023, he played in the Afimallah Cup, an official FIDE competition). According to leaked documents, he is in constant contact with diplomats, businessmen, and managers of the two-story “City of Capitals” complex. In September 2016, companies headed by Bassam (OOO Artemis and OOO Khestia) became owners of apartments on the 61st, 65th, and 73rd floors of skyscrapers, totaling 2,112 square meters.

Later, Nasser Bassam’s companies, which belonged to the Lebanese offshore company Briana Sal Offshore, transferred the properties to their parent company, and from there, the apartments were moved to the balance sheet of another offshore organization, Nylan Sal Offshore, which is also connected to the Bashar al-Assad family.

As for Bashar al-Assad himself, as our project reported in November 2024, before his overthrow, he moved his entire family to Moscow, where they settled in the Four Seasons Hotel on Red Square. Bashar later joined them. The family lived in the hotel for some time under heavy security, but then moved, presumably, to the Rublyovka area.