“Handing over the keys” meeting… Al-Shara strips employees of luxury cars

In an incident that seemed strange, Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa ordered state employees who own luxury cars to hand over their keys or face investigations on charges of illegal gain, during a previously unannounced meeting, about which Reuters obtained information.

“I did not know that the salaries paid by the government were so high,” Al-Sharaa said after more than 100 of his loyalists arrived at a former opposition base, many of them in luxury sports cars.

According to two sources who were in attendance, Al-Sharaa rebuked the gathered officials and business leaders, asking them, “Have they forgotten that they are sons of the revolution,” referring to the large number of luxury cars parked outside.

Al-Sharaa has been facing a state of turmoil for 10 months, since the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad after a 14-year war.

From time to time, the country witnessed waves of sectarian violence in which former opposition factions linked to his new government participated. This violence resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand people, and a wave of forced evictions and property confiscations occurred.

The aforementioned meeting, about which there were no previous reports, was held at a base in Idlib Governorate in northwestern Syria, far from the official presidential headquarters in Damascus.

The president was surrounded by two senior security officials as he spoke.

According to the sources and two government employees with knowledge of what happened, Al-Sharaa ordered employees who owned luxury cars to hand over their keys “or else they will face investigations on charges of illegal gain.”

All sources requested that their identities not be revealed due to the confidentiality of the matter.

The two who attended the meeting told Reuters that a number of keys were handed over to the attendees at Al-Nahwiri. Syrian officials and analysts said that the message addressed to the loyalists highlights a major challenge facing the 43-year-old president, which is how to transition to a civilian government without repeating the corruption that spread under Assad’s rule.

The Syrian Ministry of Information told Reuters that Al-Sharaa arranged a “friendly, informal meeting” in Idlib with former leaders, officials and other prominent figures, which touched on the political and security challenges as well as the need to change “the investment culture established by the previous regime.”

The ministry said that he “stressed the intolerance of any suspicion of corruption among state employees,” but denied what was reported about handing over car keys.