Mahmoud Zuabi

Mahmoud Zuabi (or Zubi or al-Zohbi or Al-Zoghbi) (1938 - May 2000) was Syria's Prime Minister from November 1 1987 until March 7 2000.

Zuabi was born in 1938 in Khirbat Ghazalah, a village 75 miles south of Damascus, Syria, near the Jordanian border. He had two sons and a daughter. He was Speaker of the Parliament from 1981 prior to being Prime Minister and was considered to very close to President Hafez al-Assad until his sudden fall from grace. He is said to have committed suicide on Sunday May 21 2000.

Under the dictatorial leadership of Syria's President Hafez al-Assad who ruled from 1971 to 2000, Zubi as Prime Minister presided over a ramshackle purportedly socialist governmental and economic system. Military and government officials exercised immense power and continue to do so. Only oil revenues kept the economy going. Even foreign aid programmes struggled to implement under the weight of bureaucratic obduracy.

Ubiquitous regulations including price-control had the effect most observers say of stifling legitimate enterprise. Many officials are forced into corruption to supplement meagre salaries. It is said that corruption extended all the way to the top Syria's government.

When President Hafez al-Assad was showing signs of poor health in the late 1990s, supporters of his son Bashar started positioning him to succeed him as President. Hafez was also a major player in these maneuverings. Syria is a republic where there was no direct transfer of power envisaged in the constitution from father to son.

As Hafez al-Assad grew sick, it became clear both father and son had decided that Zuabi's days were numbered. Tackling corruption is a popular cause among most Syrians, who see the immense wealth created at their expense as a reason why the Syrian economy has struggled to grow. The dragging down of once swaggering officials, with punishments including jail and the confiscation and auction of their illegally obtained assets earned Bashar much kudos in the community.

In March 2000, Zuabi was replaced as Prime Minister by Mohammed Mustafa Mero, regarded by some as a reformer.

In May, Hafez al-Assad decided to kick him out of the Baathist party and decided that Zuabi should be prosecuted over a scandal involving the French aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Zuabi and several senior Ministers were officially accused of receiving illegal commissions of the order of US$124 million in relation to the purchase of six Airbus 320-200 passenger jets for Syrian Airlines in 1996. The indictment alleged that the normal cost of the planes was US$250 million, but the Government paid $374 million and Airbus sent on US$124 million to the senior ministers. Three others involved in the transaction, including the former minister for Economic Affairs and the former minister for Transport were sentenced to prison for ten years.

The French company Airbus denied paying off the Syrian officials. It is interesting to note the Syrian Government in September 2003 announced its intention of purchasing six more Airbus planes for the government airline. The official finding within Syrian courts that Airbus paid over a hundred million dollars in bribes to their officials is apparently not a factor in deciding whether to continue to do business with them.

In May 2000, while under house arrest, Zuabi committed suicide rather than face trial. Some question whether he took his own life. The Syrian Arab News Agency's official explanation was that he committed suicide after learning that a Syrian police chief had arrived at his house to serve a judicial notice requiring him to appear before an investigating judge to answer allegations of corruption in relation to the Airbus transaction.