OCCRP‘s latest investigation traces how Assad-era elites started stripping Syria’s public assets long before the regime’s fall.
Speaking to OCCRP, our Sanctions Lead Analyst Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola described the sale of multi-million-dollar ship hulls for $1 as “a related-party deal designed to move assets off the Syrian state’s books while keeping them under regime control.”
Maresca di Serracapriola called the scheme “a textbook example of the broader cannibalization of the Syrian state,” noting how public wealth was siphoned into offshore shells linked to Assad’s networks — a system that still shapes Syria’s post-Assad economy.
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