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Suha arafat whats wrong if husband sends me money Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1076559704704http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1076559704704
Suha Arafat: What's wrong if my husband sends me money?
Khaled Abu Toameh Feb. 12, 2004
Suha Arafat, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's wife, on Thursday accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of "inventing" reports that French prosecutors were investigating transfers totaling $11.5m.into her bank accounts. But she did not deny that the money was transferred to her bank accounts.
In an interview with the London-based al Hayat newspaper, Suha, who has been living in Paris for the past four years, said Sharon's goal was to divert attention from police investigations against him and his sons.
"Prime Minister Sharon is responsible for these wicked leaks," she claimed. "The crisis Sharon and his sons are facing, because of investigations into charges of bribery, is behind these reports. They want to invent similar family affairs with Arafat's family."
French prosecutors said on Tuesday that they had opened a preliminary inquiry into transfers totaling 9 million Euros ($11.5m.) into Suha's bank accounts at The Arab Bank and at French bank BNP in Paris.
The Paris public prosecutor has confirmed the report, originally published in the Le Canard Enchaine weekly, that an inquiry has been launched against Suha on the basis of information provided by the Bank of France and a government anti-money laundering body.
The CBS News Sixty Minutes program reported in November that Arafat continues to send his wife Suha $100,000 from PA aid funds each month to Paris, where she lives with their daughter. The New York Daily News reported that Suha had been staying in the luxury Bristol Paris Hotel and had rented an entire floor for herself and her assistants at a cost of $16,000 a night.
Al Hayat quoted Suha as denying that an investigation was under way to determine the source of the money transferred to her bank accounts. She said no officials from either the prosecutor's office or from the banks had even contacted her. "I learned about this affair from the media," she said.
"As long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, Sharon and the Israelis will not stop trying to harm Arafat in order to hide the Palestinian plight and the killing of Palestinian children and women," she told the newspaper.
However, Suha did not deny the fact that her husband was sending her millions of dollars. "What's strange in the fact that [Yasser Arafat] should send money to his wife abroad, especially since I am working for the Palestinian cause and interests? These funds arrived legally, and my husband and I are prepared to answer any questions about these funds and their sources," she said.
According to the Paris prosecutor's office, a Swiss-based institution made the transfers to Suha's two separate bank accounts between July 2002 and July 2003. Officials in the prosecutor's office said Tracfin, an organization that collates information about money laundering, confirmed the Bank of France's suspicions about the transfers.
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