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NoonPost has obtained an exclusive list of 3,531 individuals, companies and institutions that have been subject to asset-freeze decisions imposed by the Illicit Gains Committee in Syria, a body established by presidential decree in May 2025 with the aim of “protecting public funds, combating illicit gains in all their forms, recovering illicit assets, and promoting integrity and transparency in state institutions and business sectors.”
Because it is not possible to verify the final legal status of all records included in the list, NoonPost is refraining from publishing any names or personal data, in line with the committee’s warning against trading names because doing so could infringe on individuals’ rights and expose publishers to legal liability.
This report offers a structural and statistical reading of the list’s composition and an analysis of its broader indicators, based on the detailed data it contains beyond three- or four-part names, including place and year of birth, the numbers and dates of asset-freeze decisions, and decisions lifting freezes for those who settled their status, without violating the privacy of any person or entity or affecting the committee’s work.
Individuals and companies
The list includes a total of 3,463 individuals and 68 companies and commercial institutions whose assets were frozen by the Illicit Gains Committee, with some freezes later lifted, leaving 3,293 individuals whose assets remain frozen, compared with 170 individuals who received decisions lifting the freeze. The same applies to companies: the file includes 47 companies that remain under freeze, while the freeze has been lifted on the remaining 21.
Tracking the decisions to lift freezes shows a wide disparity between companies and individuals in the speed and nature of their response to correcting their legal and financial status. While 21 out of 68 companies succeeded in obtaining decisions lifting the freeze and resuming operations a response rate of nearly 31 percent the share of individuals whose assets were unfrozen did not exceed just 5 percent, or 170 out of 3,463.
Chronologically the list shows that the freezing of assets belonging to individuals and companies began in October 2025 and continued through June 22, 2026.
Geographically the data showed that Damascus and its countryside accounted for the largest share of freeze measures, at nearly 45 percent of the total companies pursued, followed by Latakia and Tartous at roughly 25 percent, while the remaining share was distributed across Hama, Aleppo, Homs and the rest of the provinces.
Freeze decisions also targeted businesses operating in industrial cities and free zones, accounting for about 15 percent of commercial entities, indicating a drive to track the movement of capital and major investments that benefit from tax breaks and exemptions and bring them under a system of financial scrutiny.
By sector freeze decisions were issued against currency exchange and money transfer companies, tourism marketing and travel firms, makers of human medicines and cosmetics, security and guarding companies, the aviation and shipping sector, electronic payment and telecommunications companies, holding companies, construction groups and heavy industry facilities.
The reach of family and regional influence
At the family level, the data shows that freeze decisions affected entire families. Despite the large number of names on the list, they belong to 605 civil registry records (family entries), averaging five or six members from the same family, suggesting that when the committee issued a decision against a businessman or official, the seizure automatically extended to his wife, sons and daughters listed with him in the same family register to prevent the transfer of property, the smuggling of wealth, or its registration in the names of the targeted person’s relatives and close associates.
The list does not include individuals’ job titles or professional backgrounds, but when breaking down the most frequently recurring surnames and families on the list, it becomes clear that the decisions directly affected prominent business families with business networks, influence and close ties to the ousted Assad regime.
Some surnames appeared heavily, with more than 15 to 20 individuals from the same family sharing the name, indicating that the financial scrutiny sought to dismantle the “family extension” of wealth, not just the individual activities of the targeted businessmen.
As for places of birth of the individuals, Damascus topped the list with 1,112 births, followed by Aleppo with 148, then Latakia with 119, followed by Hama with 97, Homs with 80 and Tartous with 74.
It was also notable that certain towns appeared in high numbers, surpassing entire provincial capitals: the town of Qarfa in the Daraa countryside recorded 66 births, followed by Jableh with 60, then Qardaha with 49 and Talkalakh with 32, while the remaining numbers were spread across the rest of Syria’s provinces, in addition to people born abroad in Gulf, European and Arab countries.
According to age groups the middle-age bracket of businessmen and officials, from 36 to 65, topped the list, accounting for 45 percent of all those targeted by oversight measures.
The second-largest group was youth and children, from 1 day old to 35 years old, at 40 percent. Notably within this category, the names of minors under 18 appeared, making up between 5 percent and 7 percent of the names on their own. Meanwhile, the elderly category, those older than 65, accounted for 15 percent of the total listed names.
What doesn’t the list reveal?
The list appears closer to an identifying database of people and companies than to a comprehensive financial or commercial database. It includes civil status and identifying information, but contains no information on assets, ownership, money flows or company structures, making it insufficient to draw a complete picture of networks of economic influence or the paths of wealth accumulation.
The list also does not clarify why any person or company was included, nor does it distinguish between those who may be under investigation and those whose names appear by virtue of kinship, partnership or a business relationship, which makes it, in its current form, insufficient to understand the nature or scope of any potential cases.
The number of listed companies — just 68 — is also low relative to the number and scale of the economic empires formed during Assad’s years in power, as many businessmen tied to circles of influence relied on creating broad networks of companies spread across different sectors and characterized by multiple fronts and ownership structures.
What is the Illicit Gains Committee?
Syria’s new administration is seeking to revive the country’s battered economy and pull it out of crises accumulated over 14 years. Assad regime rule led to structural decay in the economy, which it managed through “war traders” and financial tycoons, relying on mechanisms to evade sanctions and on drug production amid the complete collapse of productive sectors.
The Syrian administration has introduced several economic changes and created institutions and entities to manage and attract investment. It has also intensified anti-corruption efforts and reorganized oversight institutions, including the Central Authority for Control and Inspection, and established the Illicit Gains Committee about five months after the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s regime.
The committee is headed by engineer Basel al-Suwaidan, who holds several positions, including minister of agriculture since May 2026. According to its official website its mission is to “protect public funds by investigating cases of illicit gains, managing settlement and voluntary disclosure programs, recovering suspicious assets for the state’s public treasury, spreading a culture of integrity, and strengthening citizens’ trust in public institutions.”
The committee offers a voluntary disclosure program that had been scheduled to end at the close of May 2026 before it announced a three-month extension. The mechanism allows individuals and entities suspected of obtaining illicit gains to settle their financial status through negotiated settlements, which the committee presents as a way to speed up asset recovery in light of judicial constraints and the lengthy timelines associated with formal litigation procedures.
By contrast, these “settlements” with businessmen close to the ousted Assad regime have stirred public anger, amid popular demands that they be held accountable and not recycled into the national economy.
Following public protests linked to the “settlements,” the committee clarified that settlements do not nullify public rights, do not exempt participants from criminal liability, and do not affect the personal legal claims of those harmed.
In the same context, committee head Basel al-Suwaidan stressed that asset recovery proceeds in parallel with other justice mechanisms and is not a substitute for criminal accountability, emphasizing that these settlements aim to recover the largest possible share of illicit funds, return economic activity to the formal framework, and close the financial file without infringing on the rights of the state, the judiciary or victims.
A report by consulting firm “Karam Shaar” indicates that legal ambiguity still surrounds the committee’s mechanism of operation. While Article 4 of the founding decree limits the committee’s jurisdiction to holders of public office and civilian and military employees, its practical application so far has focused primarily on private-sector businessmen linked to the former regime.
This discrepancy between the jurisdiction defined by law and the parties targeted in practice raises fundamental questions about the limits of the committee’s interpretation of its powers and the legal basis on which it relies in its prosecutions.
Despite the criticism, the names appearing on the list and the public statements issued by the Illicit Gains Committee reflect the outlines of efforts to deal with the legacy of complex financial influence, dry up the sources of crooked financial networks that grew during the war years, and cripple the ability of economic fronts to move or smuggle those funds, amid hopes of reorganizing the economic landscape on the basis of accountability and cleansing the business sector of the destructive effects of war-economy networks and “blood” merchants.