Without trying to start a debate about the man himself, can anyone tell me where all of his money came from? I heard it was something like $5 billion. I can’t imagine he made it all in the stock market. 
And if the general answer is “corruption,” or something along those lines, is there any way for it be taken back?
Also, is it at all clear that his wife and daughter will get all or any of this money? Did she sign a pre-nup?
Is the $5 billion a number that you can verify for us? Or is it just something that someone madeup? Without knowing exactly how much money he had squirrled away, it’s impossible to answer the question.
Much well-researched information by a well-known expert in things Mid-Eastern.
Note: Author has a political bias, but is honest and backs up his statements.
There’s many stories like this circulating
http://www.wpherald.com/Middle_East/storyview.php?StoryID=20041114-020547-1871r
Forbes recently listed him in 2003 as the ninth wealthiest head of state, with a conservative figure of $300 million (second hand report - I can’t find the list on Forbes at the moment). Anyway, an answer to the OP would be that a lot of the PLO’s money was directly in Arafat’s control, and sorting out what was actual his and what belongs to the Palestinian government will be difficult.
So did he, or the PLO, just get it all from “donations?” Surely the donors must have eventually realized something was up? Or did they just not care?
According to a story on NPR last week, prior to his involvement in the PLO, Arafat began his professional life as an engineeer, and made a pretty good chunk of change.
Arafat was an engineer for a lot of his early life, in Kuwait, during what would have been their first big wave of modernization projects with their new-found oil money. I imagine he did quite well.
Quite a few donations are made from the richer Gulf Arab states to various Palestinian causes, although it seemed to me when I working in Qatar that the PLO, a multi-faith coalition with a bit of reputation for incompetence and corruption, had fallen a bit out of favor. A lot of my younger, more radically-inclined students thought Hamas was more honest and more “active.” I’ve never been to Palestinian territories, but have read a few places that when not blowing things up, Hamas has indeed tended to deliver the goods in terms of charity to refugees.
But for the most part, I imagine people wrote checks and didn’t/don’t ask too many questions (one of the five pillars of Islam is zakat, the giving of alms, and this has become a highly organized process; think United Way on a bigger scale allowing for population size differences).
One of the evening news programs last night (I was switching among NBC, ABC, and CBS to avoid commercials) had a story on this last night.
One of the people interviewed was his Israeli[!] investment manager, who had about $450,000,000 at his disposal at the peak.
The segment said flatly that Israel had been funneling Arafat money for years essentially as a bribe to keep terrorist activities down before finally giving it up as a lost cause.
It was also implied that Arafat simply skimmed off large amounts of any foreign government’s money that was intended for Palestine or the PLO.
Here’s a slightest different story fromCBS News
If this is to be believed. I came across from the segment thinking, “he made his moneythe old fashioned way: he stole it.”
Well, if he made billions being an engineer, then god (or should that be Allah?) bless him!
So who gets it now?
No it shouldn’t. “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for “God”. Arabic-speaking Christians would call God “Allah” too. If I’m not mistaken it is a contraction of “il” meaning “the” and “alah” meaning “god” (not capitalized).
If that is true, then what does it mean when Muslims say “There is no God but Allah?” Shouldn’t they be saying “There is no Allah but Allah?”
In Arabic that’s pretty much what you do, allowing for grammatical adjustment. The Shahadah (statement of faith): "“Ashhadu Alla Ilaha Illa Allah Wa Ashhadu Anna Muhammad Rasulu Allah”
We can think of it as “there is no other god than THE ONE God”
In any case, it’s pretty common for the wealth estimate for various dictators or would-be dictators to vary by entire orders of magnitude. In part because of the aforementioned lack of borderlines between the National Treasury and the Leader’s Bank Account, making it hard to figure out even where did the skimming happen. A million here and a million there that the books don’t balance on a particular project, appropriation or line of credit, and pretty soon you’re talking real money – and you can always order your comptroller to just write balanced numbers on the budget report at the end of the year, if he does not want to be shot. Marcos, Mobutu, Arafat, even Castro have had figures anywhere from the hundred-millions to the multi-billions thrown around about them w/o much chance at a real accounting.
I can imagine a scenario in which Arafat salts away 250 mil, but detractors insist that it’s $5 Billion, to make him look like an even bigger thief; the PA top hierarchy devoutly wishes there were 5 billion waiting to be reclaimed somewhere but if there isn’t they’re ready to tell the people it’s Suha’s fault; and Suha tries to reshuffle as much as possible because she knows she can’t count on any of the bastards to look out for her and the kid.