Our factsheet on George Heswani, Syria's man in Moscow who was recently linked to the Beirut port blast
https://www.syria-report.com/library/economic-data/factsheet-george-heswani-syrias-man-moscow-recently-linked-beirut-port-blast @TheSyriaReport

Over the course of the Syrian conflict, Heswani, a Christian from the town of Yabroud, was involved in negotiations with both the Nusra Front and the Islamic State. In 2013 he brokered a deal to free a group of a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns who had been abducted by the Front.

In 2014, he negotiated with ISIS to ensure the safety of a gas processing plant built by Russian company Stroytransgaz, of which he was a sub-contractor, and to buy oil on behalf of the government—Mr Heswani denies the oil purchase deal.

Before his business activities, Heswani was a government employee, managing the Banias refinery, and was educated in the USSR. The engineering company he founded became a sub-contractor to Russian companies across the Arab world, including in Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, and Jordan.

He is now suspected of having been involved in purchasing ammonium nitrate on behalf of the government. One of his business partners was sanctioned by OFAC in 2015 for "an attempted procurement of ammonium nitrate."