Feb 13 (Reuters) - Syria's new rulers are combing through the billion-dollar corporate empires of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's allies, and have held talks with some of these tycoons, in what they say is a campaign to root out corruption and illegal activity.
After seizing power in December, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group that now runs Syria pledged to reconstruct the country after 13 years of brutal civil war and abandon a highly-centralized and corrupt economic system where Assad's cronies held sway.
To do so, the executive led by new president Ahmed al-Sharaa has set up a committee tasked with dissecting the sprawling corporate interests of high-profile Assad-linked tycoons including Samer Foz and Mohammad Hamsho, three sources told Reuters.
Days after taking Damascus, the new administration issued orders aimed at freezing companies and bank accounts of Assad-linked businesses and individuals, and later specifically included those on U.S. sanctions lists, according to correspondence between the Syrian central bank and commercial banks reviewed by Reuters.
Hamsho and Foz, targeted by U.S. sanctions since 2011 and 2019 respectively, returned to Syria from abroad and met with senior HTS figures in Damascus in January, according to a government official and two Syrians with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The two men, who are reviled by many ordinary Syrians for their close ties to Assad, pledged to cooperate with the new leadership's fact-finding efforts, the three sources said.
Accused by the U.S. Treasury of getting rich off Syria's war, Foz's sprawling Aman Holding conglomerate has interests in pharma, sugar refining, trading and transport.
Hamsho's interests, grouped under the Hamsho International Group, are similarly wide-ranging, from petrochemicals and metal products to television production. Hamsho, whom the U.S. Treasury has accused of being a front for Assad and his brother Maher, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Foz could not be reached.
The establishment of the committee, whose members are not public, and the conversations between Syria's new government and two of the Assad government's closest tycoons who control large parts of Syria's economy have not been previously reported.
The new Syrian government's approach towards powerful Assad-linked businesses, yet to be fully clarified, will be key in determining the fate of the economy as the administration struggles to convince Washington and its allies to remove sanctions, Syrian analysts and businessmen say.