A forum on recovering frozen assets of fallen Arab autocrats held in Qatar Tuesday called for a mechanism to deliver the wealth to the new post-Arab Spring governments. The Qatari head of the inaugural meeting of the Forum on Asset Recovery said that new laws should be introduced to help in recovering the assets, just as laws were created to combat terrorism funding after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"There is an international precedent. It was after September 11, to trace the movement of capital that could be used in terrorism," said Qatar's public prosecutor Ali al-Miri. "Just as the world needed then new strict and abiding laws, Arab Spring countries now need an international mechanism to help getting back the stolen funds, to avoid double standards," he told a press conference. Miri accused some host countries of "living of" those frozen assets that could potentially amount to billions of dollars.
Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the US president and deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs said the task was "very difficult." "It is very difficult, it is complicated. It is a long-term process," he warned at the press conference that concluded the first day of the meeting which wraps up Thursday. The forum brings together G8 countries, as well as several Arab states and Turkey, with the aim of starting a process of collaboration on asset recovery for Arab countries that ousted their dictators.
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