The lavish lifestyle and tastes of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad are on display in a video showing an abandoned garage at Damascus’ presidential palace filled with luxury cars.
The video, reviewed by ABC News, shows a car collection worth millions of dollars that the defeated regime leader left behind as he fled the country during a weekend rebel attack on the capital.
A still image from a video of the abandoned garage of the presidential palace in Damascus reveals Bashar al-Assad’s wealth for the first time.
Retrieved from ABC News
The person filming points to luxury cars such as Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Aston Martins and says incredulously: “We’re alive? Look…we’re not Dubai!” he said.
One of them is believed to be a Ferrari F50, of which only 349 were ever built. One sold for more than $5.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction earlier this year.
President Bashar al-Assad resigned on Sunday and fled the country after rebels marched into the capital Damascus and caught government forces by surprise 10 days after the rebels began their lightning advance.
The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group’s rebel military operations command declared Damascus city “liberated from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad.” Rebels were seen looting palaces and government buildings.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma prepare to vote at a presidential election polling station in Douma town, Eastern Ghouta region, near the Syrian capital Damascus, on May 26, 2021.
Hassan Ammar/Associated Press, File
President Assad took a flight from Damascus on Sunday morning, and Russian state media reported that he and his family are currently in Moscow. A Kremlin spokesman confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Assad political asylum but did not reveal his whereabouts.
The fall of Assad ended his 24-year rule before Syria plunged into a brutal civil war in 2011. The Assad family has ruled Syria since 1971.
Luxury cars offer a glimpse of Assad’s wealth, but its full extent is difficult to ascertain. A State Department report to Congress in 2022 noted that the Assad family’s net worth is generally estimated to be between $1 billion and $2 billion, but the department was unable to substantiate that estimate. .
“The difficulty in accurately estimating the net worth of President Assad and his relatives is due to family assets believed to be hidden and spread across numerous accounts, real estate portfolios, companies, and overseas tax havens.” The book says:
Meanwhile, as of March, 90% of Syria’s population lived below the poverty line, according to the United Nations refugee agency. According to the agency, it is estimated that approximately 13 million people nationwide are food insecure.
