{"id":356627,"date":"2021-10-21T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T05:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/oct\/21\/assad-regime-siphons-millions-in-aid-by-manipulating-syrias-currency"},"modified":"2021-10-21T17:28:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T17:28:55","slug":"assad-regime-siphons-millions-in-aid-by-manipulating-syrias-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/21\/assad-regime-siphons-millions-in-aid-by-manipulating-syrias-currency\/","title":{"rendered":"Assad regime \u2018siphons millions in aid\u2019 by manipulating Syria\u2019s currency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Government pocketed half of donations in 2020 as central bank forced UN agencies to use lower exchange rate<\/p><p><br>The Syrian government is siphoning off millions of dollars of foreign aid by forcing UN agencies to use a lower exchange rate, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csis.org\/analysis\/how-assad-regime-systematically-diverts-tens-millions-aid\">new research<\/a>.<\/p><p>The Central Bank of Syria, which is sanctioned by the UK, US and EU, in effect made $60m (\u00a344m) in 2020 by pocketing $0.51 of every aid dollar sent to Syria, making UN contracts one of the biggest money-making avenues for President Bashar al-Assad and his government, researchers from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csis.org\/\">Center for Strategic and International Studies<\/a> (CSIS), the <a href=\"https:\/\/opc.center\/\">Operations &amp; Policy Center<\/a> thinktank and the <a href=\"https:\/\/coar-global.org\/\">Center for Operational Analysis and Research<\/a> found.<\/p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/oct\/21\/assad-regime-siphons-millions-in-aid-by-manipulating-syrias-currency\">Continue reading...<\/a>\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/oct\/21\/assad-regime-siphons-millions-in-aid-by-manipulating-syrias-currency\">Human rights | The Guardian<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Government pocketed half of donations in 2020 as central bank forced UN agencies to use lower exchange rateThe Syrian government is siphoning off millions of dollars of foreign aid by forcing UN agencies to use a lower exchange rate, according to new r&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9485,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1105,11679,37164,1318,7411,1333,1334,6,24019,640,1258,520,196,111,1310],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357441,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356627\/revisions\/357441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}