When Syria’s national football association handed a marketing deal to a Damascus start-up in 2019, the terms looked very favorable for the little-known firm.
The company, Afkar Co. for Art, Visual and Advertisement Services, had no website and left little digital or media footprint.
But the deal with the Syrian Football Association, known as the SFA, gave the company exclusive advertising and marketing rights to all domestic Syrian competitions, the country’s national and Olympic teams, as well as all regional and international championships.
The contract, which was awarded without a tender, also gave Afkar an unusually large 35-percent cut of the revenues from its marketing activities, entitling it to a significant portion of the SFA’s income. Hossam Moasas, the SFA’s legal counsel at the time, described the deal’s terms as a “disaster” for the SFA.
Behind the scenes, the influence of former President Bashar Al-Assad’s brother Maher was instrumental to landing the deal for Afkar, three people involved in the deal told OCCRP’s partner, Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ).
Afkar was majority-owned by Fares Al-Jadaan, Maher Al-Assad’s nephew by marriage, company registry documents show. Moasas, as well as the SFA’s president at the time of the deal, and Afkar’s former public relations manager all told OCCRP that Jadaan’s family ties to Maher Al-Assad were the reason the contract was awarded.
Maher Al-Assad, President Bashar Al-Assad’s brother.
Mohamed Fadi Al-Dabbas, the former SFA president, said the Afkar deal was signed after the SFA received “instructions” from the Fourth Division’s office, adding that “whoever does not follow the instructions will lose his head.”
“If I hadn’t signed it, I would have been sent to Saydnaya,” Dabbas said, referring to a notorious prison complex north of Damascus where the Assad regime held and tortured inmates.
Jadaan did not reply to requests for comment. His father, Bassel Al-Jadaan, denied that his family’s link to Maher’s wife was the reason the contract was handed to Afkar: "There is no truth to any fabrications and allegations related to the alleged information you have that the kinship relationship between me and my sister ... was exploited in any governmental or private sector," he said.
Rima Haddad, Afkar’s executive director at the time the contract was issued, said she was not aware of pressure from the Fourth Division and dismissed the idea that Maher Al-Assad’s influence was the reason the contract was awarded as “hearsay” and “a false allegation.”
“The company did not receive any sovereign support or cover from influential people at any stage of its contract with the football association,” she said.
Maher Al-Assad, whose current whereabouts are unknown, could not be reached for comment.
The collapse of Assad’s regime in December dismantled a patronage network that had long benefited insiders. Maher Al-Assad’s Fourth Armoured Division, one of Syria’s most powerful military units, developed a kleptocratic network of business interests in areas such as metals, tobacco, and weapons smuggling. The unit was sanctioned by the United States in 2020 and by the European Union in 2023.
A toppled statue of Hafez al-Assad in the streets of Damascus, Syria, in December 2024.
Fares Al-Jadaan is little known in Syria, but he is the nephew of Maher Al-Assad’s wife, who is sanctioned by the EU for benefiting from and being closely associated with the Assad regime.
Ghaith Harfouch, Afkar’s former public relations manager, told reporters that the SFA awarded the contract to Afkar under pressure from Maher Al-Assad’s adviser Ghassan Ali Bilal, who served as head of the Fourth Division’s security bureau. Bilal could not be reached for comment.
Moasas, the former legal counsel, told reporters that the SFA was working from an “inferior position” during the 2019 contract negotiations.
“I realized from the first meeting that the contract was like a contract of adhesion: ‘We [Afkar] want to take a share from you [the SFA], whether you like it or not,’” Moasas said, referring to a type of contract signed between two parties with unequal bargaining power.
Salah Ramadan, the SFA’s president from 2022 to 2024, said that when he took his position, he was told to “be careful” when dealing with Jadaan, whose family connections were “known” at the time the contract was signed.
Army Budget for Syrian Sports
The 35-percent cut of revenues proved particularly controversial.
Abdul Fattah Al-Taljabini, a Syrian expert in sports management, said that Syrian marketing companies’ revenue-sharing rates are usually between 3 and 10 percent. Harfouch, Afkar’s former public relations manager, said most companies took 10 or 20 percent.
Under the deal’s terms, Afkar’s earnings for 2022 and 2023 would have amounted to about $240,550 in total, according to OCCRP's calculation of the amounts in the company's requests for payment and activity report it sent to the SFA during the period. By comparison, the SFA’s own earnings in 2022 and the first half of 2023 combined amounted to less than $500,000.
It is not clear how much the SFA actually paid Afkar. The SFA did not reply to OCCRP's questions. Afkar claims that significant amounts were unpaid by the time the contract was terminated in 2022.
Moasas, the SFA’s former legal counsel, said that during negotiations, he tried to balance out some of the contract terms that were too favorable to the company, such as the 35-percent clause, through an executive regulations annex. “My goal was to make the disasters in the contract as mild as possible,” he said. Ultimately, he did not succeed.
Haddad, Afkar’s former executive director, said the company was awarded the contract after it sent a marketing proposal to the president of the Syrian General Sports Federation, the SFA’s parent organization. (An internal memo obtained by reporters shows the parent body did approve the Afkar contract.)
She maintained that her company was “very professional” and pointed out that it had brought in new advertising and other contracts for the SFA.
Haddad defended the 35-percent clause, saying the contract was the first of its kind and “commercial custom in Syria stipulates that the [marketing] partner be given a percentage that may reach half and no less than a third without bearing any expenses or costs.”
She added that Afkar ultimately received “much less” than $240,550 from the SFA, but declined to give specific figures.
Syria’s Federation Chamber of Commerce did not respond to OCCRP’s questions about the usual revenue-sharing rates for marketing contracts.
After taking his position in 2022, Ramadan terminated Afkar’s contract after criticizing the revenue-sharing clause, though he said the SFA was still obliged to pay Jadaan “his dues.” He told SIRAJ that the contract had been “unfair” to the SFA, specifically citing the 35-percent clause.
Haddad did not comment on the reasons the contract was terminated, citing confidentiality agreements, but said that “shortcomings that marred the implementation of the contract” had been “resolved amicably and through legal means.”
In September 2022, Afkar filed a complaint to the state’s public sector audit authority against the SFA to collect payments Afkar claims it was still owed. The outcome of the complaint is not clear, and the following year, Afkar was dissolved.
Since then, the SFA has been handling its marketing on its own.
Mazen Al Hindi contributed reporting.
