President Emmanuel Macron announced during a two-day visit to Damascus that France will return more than 50 million euros seized from the family of former president Bashar al-Assad to the Syrian people, earmarked for development projects. A declaration of intent signed by the French and Syrian foreign ministers on the sidelines of the visit specifies that the two countries will begin the process of repatriating 51 million euros from assets confiscated from Rifaat al-Assad, the former leader’s uncle, by the French justice system. The visit, the first by a French head of state since 2009 and the first by any Western European leader since the Assad regime was toppled in late 2024, was framed by Paris as a step towards supporting Syria’s reconstruction after more than a decade of civil war.

The asset transfer was accompanied by a series of economic agreements. Macron’s office confirmed that French shipping giant CMA CGM signed a partnership to operate air freight at Damascus International Airport, building on its existing concession to manage the Latakia container terminal, which was renewed in April 2025 under a 230-million-euro investment plan. The terminal has since attracted a 20 per cent stake from the UAE’s AD Ports Group. TotalEnergies’ chief executive, who travelled with the delegation, said he would meet Syrian counterparts to discuss an offshore exploration contract, following a memorandum of understanding signed in May with the Syrian Petroleum Company, QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips to assess a block in the Levant Basin. France also offered to assist in restructuring the Syrian central bank and reopening its account in Paris, a move that Damascus has sought to facilitate financial transactions with European institutions. The European Union has separately pledged a 620-million-euro funding package over three years for Syria’s recovery.

Rifaat al-Assad, a former vice-president and commander of the internal security forces, fled Syria in 1984 after a failed coup against his brother Hafez. He later resided in Switzerland and France, where a court in 2022 sentenced him to four years in prison for money laundering and misappropriation of Syrian public funds, estimating his illicit assets at 90 million euros. He returned to Syria in 2021 to evade the sentence and was photographed with Bashar al-Assad in 2023. After the regime’s collapse, he left Syria and died in January 2025 at the age of 88. Swiss prosecutors had separately indicted him for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in the 1982 crackdown on an Islamist uprising in Hama, an operation that earned him the nickname “the Butcher of Hama” and left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead, according to varying estimates.

The visit was shadowed by two improvised explosive devices that detonated near the Four Seasons hotel in central Damascus shortly after Macron’s departure. The Syrian interior ministry said 18 people, including four police officers, were injured as security teams attempted to dismantle the devices, one placed in a parked car and the other in a rubbish bin. The incident highlighted the precarious security environment as the new authorities in Damascus seek to attract foreign investment and diplomatic engagement. The repatriation of the confiscated funds is set to begin under the signed declaration, while technical negotiations on banking support and energy exploration are expected to proceed in the coming months.