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Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/757346.asp?0cb=-217482
Mohammed Rashid: Arafat’s Money Man
(Newsweek) - "Palestinians are tired of corruption, cronyism and shady deals." That makes Mohammed Rashid -- the shadowy financial adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- a target. “Now everyone is talking about how he does the dirty business for Arafat,” said Manuel Hassassian, a political scientist at Bethlehem University. Rashid is not even Palestinian. An ethnic Kurd, he first made contact with the PLO during the early 1980s in Beirut, then counseled Arafat in Tunis on ways to expand PLO investments. When Arafat moved to Gaza in 1994, Rashid became one of his main financial operators. Critics say he helped secure import monopolies for the PA and for friends, sometimes in partnership with Israeli businessmen. Before Ariel Sharon's election last year, he sent his son Omri to Vienna for talks with Rashid. Israeli newspapers said the discussions included ways to reopen the Oasis Casino that Palestinians built in Jericho in 1998, which was shut down after fighting erupted 20 months ago.