Khaled Salam: The Man Who Managed Arafat's Money
Mohammed Rashid, known as Khaled Salam, controlled much of the Palestinian Authority's commercial wealth in the Arafat years. The story of that money became a story about accountability.
In the years after the Oslo Accords, one of the most powerful men in Palestinian politics held no elected office and rarely appeared in public. Mohammed Rashid, known by his nom de guerre Khaled Salam, was Yasser Arafat's economic adviser. He oversaw a web of companies, monopolies and investment accounts that made up much of the Palestinian Authority's commercial wealth.
The Arafat system
Rashid, of Iraqi Kurdish origin, had worked with Arafat's Fatah movement for years before the PA was established in 1994. Afterwards he managed commercial operations that included stakes in cement, fuel, telecommunications and a casino in Jericho. Many of these were run through the Palestinian Commercial Services Company.
Supporters said the arrangement gave the fledgling Authority independent resources and flexibility in a hostile environment. Critics, including donors and Palestinian reformers, saw it as an opaque system. They argued that it concentrated power in Arafat's hands, fed patronage and kept public money outside the budget.
Reform and the Palestine Investment Fund
Pressure for financial transparency grew during the second intifada. In 2002, Salam Fayyad, a former IMF official, became finance minister. He consolidated the PA's commercial assets into a single public holding company, the Palestine Investment Fund, and published its holdings. An IMF review in 2003 found that hundreds of millions of dollars in PA revenue had been diverted in the late 1990s to accounts under Arafat's control. It said much of that money was later recovered into the fund.
After Arafat
After Arafat's death in 2004, Rashid left the Palestinian territories and settled abroad. In 2012 the Palestinian Authority brought corruption charges against him, and a Palestinian court convicted him in absentia of embezzlement. He denied wrongdoing and described the case as politically motivated.
Why it still matters
The story of Khaled Salam belongs to a larger debate about Palestinian governance: how to finance a state-in-waiting under occupation, and how to keep that money accountable. The reforms of the Fayyad era are still cited as a model of what transparency could achieve. The opacity that preceded them is cited as a warning.