Intro
There are billionaires everywhere, so let’s swing the globe around and see what life is like for the billionaires that live or are from Syria.
The Makhlouf Family
The richest man in all of Syria, Remy McCloof. He and his family live an infamously decadent life that has put them in the hot seat recently.
Remy himself owns Syria’s largest mobile phone network in Syria. This has gained him a net worth somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 billion. It’s hard to know for sure because there are a lot of rumors about where some of his money might really be coming from.
You see, he is the maternal cousin of Syria’s infamous president Assad. Some have even claimed that for a while there he was so closely tied to the president that no foreign powers could do business in the nation without Remy’s personal go-ahead. What a guy.
Is bringing home shady cash and the billions like this exactly posting videos online giving a tour of his various homes or shady luxury rides to bet his kiddo Ali didn’t quite get that memo, and it looks like it probably doomed the entire freaking family.
Recently, he’s been photographed with multiple incredibly expensive rides. That includes a Ferrari that’s said to be worth over three hundred thousand dollars. He’s also been spotted with multiple other sports cars, luxury boats, and designer clothes, all of which show that he’s at least got access to millions, if not billions, of dollars.
He even went so far as to publicly state he was intending to invest 300 million dollars in property in the Beverly Hills area.
Well, that kind of thing would be a great look for 99 percent of the population. When your country’s poverty rate has skyrocketed to historic highs and over 60 percent of the country may not have access to basics like enough food to eat, wanting big-time wealth is not a great look.
Evidently, the big man himself and the president’s close friendship took a major beating, to the point that he was literally put on house arrest. That’s because the man’s son was continuing to flaunt his wealth left and right on Instagram.
I mean, if your dad’s trying to keep shady corruption charges under your hat during a turbulent time in the nation’s history, it’s probably not a great idea to be posting shirtless pics of yourself in L.A. on the hood of your incredibly expensive sports car.
Authorities have been wondering exactly how he’s been getting this money and how he’s been traveling so much. When asked, he said he quote “got an internship” and that his sports cars are quote “rented.”
The president himself also doesn’t want that kind of attention focused on his personal wealth right now for even more serious reasons. Despite all of the challenges that have been going on in Syria for years, he also has a pretty sizable fortune. It’s been reported that he’s worth two billion dollars himself.
Though he may have gotten in a little too deep with a world leader who is even more notorious than he is—the most infamous man in the world right now, Vladimir Putin himself.
He saw this kind of flaunted wealth and reportedly started demanding loan repayments from Syria to the tune of three billion dollars. It goes without saying that the extended family and the nation of Syria owing Putin that kind of money is not great.
He’s a man that’s well known for holding grudges. It doesn’t seem like they might be keeping that billionaire status for much longer, all because his son just couldn’t stop posting Instagram selfies long enough for his dad to get clear of corruption charges.
There’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, but I doubt anyone involved will learn it.
Helly Nahmad
Heli Namid is an art dealer of Syrian descent who mainly operates out of New York City. His family has been well known in the art scene of NYC for quite a long time.
Hell, he’s a chip off the old block. While his exact net worth hasn’t been disclosed, based on his spending habits it’s clear to pretty much everyone that the man’s definitely in the three-comma club.
Not convinced? Let me prove it to you.
Let’s look at where the man’s known for living. He owns a place in Trump Tower. Not impressed? Sure, apartments in the tower can go for as low as over a million. You don’t exactly have to be a billionaire to pull that off.
Well, what about owning an entire floor? Yeah, this guy literally owns the whole floor of this famous building, and that’s not cheap. It cost him over 21 million dollars to pull this off.
As impressive as that is, surely you could make such a purchase even if you had like half a billion in the bank.
Let’s look at his art collection, otherwise known as his blue chips. He famously bought Picasso’s Young Girl with a Flower Basket painting for over 115 million dollars.
This is only a drop in the bucket for him. Him and his family are well known for dropping millions upon millions on art, from everyone from Francis Bacon to Claude Monet.
That wasn’t showing enough. Evidently, he would just pluck pieces off the wall to use for his personal life. This man’s tendency of throwing famous works around is legendary.
So much so that the movie Molly’s Game features a character named Shelley who not-so-subtly features a scene where a character walks in with a 7 million dollar Monet he just pulled off the wall and uses it as collateral for a high-stakes poker game.
Now, is that a coincidence? Well, this movie is actually based on a true story. Judging from his famous friendship with Leonardo DiCaprio, who used to frequent these exact games and is also featured in the book if not the movie adaptation, I’d say there’s a good chance this is definitely supposed to be him.
Then there’s his arrest that really seals the deal.
Outside of his interest in the art world, he also had some, let’s say, shady other hobbies. He and his friends were evidently doing some supposedly harmless sports betting.
Well, it would have been harmless if it wasn’t declared a huge gambling ring worth well over 6 million dollars. He was eventually arrested and pled guilty to all charges. Then he was sentenced to over 12 months in prison.
Of course, he didn’t come close to serving that full sentence. He only served four, because in 2021 he was pardoned by outgoing President Trump.
Sometimes it pays to have friends in high places.
Jose Mugrabi
Leo’s bestie in the art world is not the only billionaire of Syrian descent who is all about buying blue-chip artworks.
It turns out that he’s got some real competition. Actually, Jose Mugrabi is a billionaire in the textile industry. As you’d expect from his appearance on this list, he’s super successful in his field.
His net worth has been reported to be over 5 billion dollars. Most of this money seems to go towards building his massive art collection.
His first major purchase was when he picked up a four million dollar Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Since then, he’s dropped millions and millions on becoming the biggest collector of Andy Warhol paintings, with over 800 in his possession.
He’s not exactly featured in Forbes often, so our info on this guy mostly comes from his son’s high-profile divorce. No wonder so many of these billionaires have their fiancés sign non-disclosure agreements.
Ghassan Aboud
Ghassan Aboud is a Dubai-based Syrian entrepreneur slash philanthropist. To date, he has scored upwards of 1.7 billion dollars.
He’s managed to pick himself a huge pad in Florida, in a neighborhood where homes tend to go for upwards of six million dollars. We see that he’s got himself a pool, palm trees, and all the trappings of a true mansion paradise.
No, he’s not the kind of guy who’s nice enough to give us a tour, though I guess he is well known for being nice to other people.
He created the Orient for Human Relief. This organization, which he founded in 2012, sought to provide medical, educational, and social services to the millions of Syrians that have been displaced or injured in the Syrian conflicts.
This earned him multiple awards.
Outro
So if you have the choice of throwing art and Insta selfies around left and right, or being an awarded philanthropist, it seems like one choice pays off much better than the other.
Good guys don’t always finish last.