Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Forbes.com: Auditing Arafat (requires quick registration) Link via Kesher Talk
This is an interesting article touching on Arafat's financial machinations - touching on because no doubt a more comprehensive look would take up the entire magazine. Shows what PA Finance Minister Salam Fayyad has cut out for him.
The Palestinian leader has more than Israeli tanks to worry about. He may be brought to heel by, of all things, honest financial accounting.
Frozen out by the Bush Administration and hemmed in by the Israeli military, Yasir Arafat is now facing a new threat: the cutoff of funds from his very own Palestinian Authority. Financial reforms might succeed in hampering the flow of money to terrorists--might even end up toppling Arafat himself.
Money keeps Arafat in power. With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in "tuition" for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a company controlled by friends of Arafat, for a 50-ton shipment of weapons from Iran.
Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That's the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad, 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas who got the finance job last June. Israel has responded by resuming the transfer of $30 million or more per month in tax revenues to the PA, disbursements that were frozen in December 2000 following an outbreak of terrorist bombings. Israel may even release the $500 million-plus that piled up during the freeze.[...]
Frozen out by the Bush Administration and hemmed in by the Israeli military, Yasir Arafat is now facing a new threat: the cutoff of funds from his very own Palestinian Authority. Financial reforms might succeed in hampering the flow of money to terrorists--might even end up toppling Arafat himself.
Money keeps Arafat in power. With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in "tuition" for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a company controlled by friends of Arafat, for a 50-ton shipment of weapons from Iran.
Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That's the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad, 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas who got the finance job last June. Israel has responded by resuming the transfer of $30 million or more per month in tax revenues to the PA, disbursements that were frozen in December 2000 following an outbreak of terrorist bombings. Israel may even release the $500 million-plus that piled up during the freeze.[...]
