Spain mulls $660 mn graft case against uncle of Syria’s Assad

Spain’s top criminal court is mulling legal action against President Bashar al-Assad’s uncle for laundering hundreds of millions of euros taken from Syrian state coffers, legal documents showed Friday.

According to documents filed at Spain’s National Court, Rifaat al-Assad is accused of running “a criminal group” responsible for laundering “more than 600 million euros” -- around $660 million.

Operational since the 1980s, the group -- which included eight of his sons, two of his wives and several frontmen -- worked to “conceal, transform and launder.. funds illegally plundered from the Syrian state treasury,” it said.