A family rift in Syria
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why does the President of Syria seemingly want to destroy his cousin Rami Makhlouf?
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria seems hell-bent on unseating his first cousin, and Syria's richest man, from his multi-billion dollar holdings. But Rami Makhlouf, is defying the President to his face. What's going on, what's at stake for Syria?
Ed Butler speaks to the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen. Plus he asks Ayman Abdel-Nour, a former economic advisor to the Syrian ruling party who knew Bashar al Assad at university, what he thinks is going on.
(Picture: Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf; Credit: Louai Beshara/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people. |
| 0:03.4 | A scientist who wanted it made, but then didn't want it to be used. |
| 0:07.5 | My own grandfather and a picture of a mushroom cloud. |
| 0:12.0 | The bomb, a brand new podcast from the BBC World Service, available now. |
| 0:20.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up, who is Syria's richest man? Rami McCluth. |
| 0:28.2 | MacLoof was a man who made billions out of construction, out of oil, import, export, you name it. He had a finger in it. |
| 0:38.1 | And why now is Rami's cousin, the president, seemingly determined to destroy him? |
| 0:43.4 | We shouldn't look at him only as a money machine or an ATM machine. |
| 0:49.8 | He is also the prestige of his family, which is bigger and higher prestige than Asad family. |
| 0:56.8 | A family feud with big implications for Syria. |
| 1:00.9 | That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:05.4 | I'll be a video, other, |
| 1:09.3 | some of the Molabasat on things, also. this is a video a other. This is the sound of a man apparently in trouble. Rami |
| 1:23.1 | McCluth, Syria's richest man, he's worth billions by most estimates, complaining via his Facebook |
| 1:28.6 | account that the country's president is out to get him. |
| 1:37.5 | Security agents started to arrest our workers. |
| 1:40.4 | Who would have thought that these intelligence agencies would come to Rami McClive's |
| 1:43.6 | companies when I was the largest supporter of these agencies and was their best servant during the war? |
| 1:48.1 | Unfortunately, things have changed. |
| 1:54.2 | It is remarkable, especially when you consider that the president, Bashar al-Assad, is |
| 1:59.3 | Rami McClough's first cousin. Jeremy Bowen is the BBC's Middlear al-Assad, is Rami MacLoof's first cousin. |
| 2:01.4 | Jeremy Bowen is the BBC's Middle East editor. |
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