This is what the sudden fall of Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Bashar al-Assad, means

After each internal conflict in Syria, there has been a shift of power – and this is a serious change in the dynamics of the ruling class in Damascus, writes Robert Fisk

Rami Makhlouf maintained more than 50,000 Syrians in full employment, but the Syrian president is now distancing himself from his cousin (Getty)

When the men in white socks came to take an interest in Rami Makhlouf, it meant many things to many people. Arab security cops always wear white socks – the Israelis prefer old baseball caps – but in Syria the men in white socks are usually there to protect the loyal, the wealthy, the elite, and President Bashar al-Assad himself.

But Makhlouf’s fall from grace, swift as Icarus but slow in coming, had been on people’s tongues for months. Since last October, in fact, when his companies seemed to acquire a certain Russian flavour.

Pleasant thought it was – even romantic — to believe that Vladimir Putin had grown tired of the family oligarch who stained the Assad family, and wanted to see an end to the business career of the president’s maternal cousin when Syria owed Russia so much money, this was not true. Makhlouf’s business, some of it invested into Syrian security service outfits, found itself doing too much business with Russian companies. The Damascus-Moscow treaty of friendship may be 40 years old, but it was never supposed to support private deals between Syrian militia companies and Russian servicemen. Rami Makhlouf had pushed the rules too far.

Take the al-Bustan “charity”. The quotation marks are important because Makhlouf runs a number of charities which do appear to care for wounded and sick men and women who are loyal to the regime. But al-Bustan was a little different. It paid the salaries of ex-soldiers of the Syrian army who wanted to fight in pro-regime militias. At some point, this money found its way to Russian companies; there was a scandal when a Russian sniper turned out to be on Rami Makhlouf’s payroll. A line in the sand – or perhaps a line in the battlefield – had been crossed.

Living the life of a billionaire was always a bit rich, so to speak, in the middle of a civil war, especially when tens of thousands of Syrian army soldiers were dying in the battle against Assad’s opponents – the Islamist Nusrah Front and Isis. Not least, I suppose, when every frontline Syrian soldier was given a mobile phone to maintain contact with his family. Last messages – from soldiers still fighting but about to die – could be heard by tormented mothers and fathers. The obliging and immensely profitable mobile phone company they used was called Syriatel, and it was owned by Rami.

But he had, insofar as hubris allows such self confidence, every reason to feel safe. He had been a friend and a business adviser to Bashar al-Assad for years. Both, of course, are Alawites – or Shias, if we are to sectarianise the unthinkable among government officials in Damascus – and Makhlouf was proud of the nationalist history which ran among his forbears.

His family had been prominent in the old Syrian Social Nationalist Party, originally a non-sectarian group demanding the unity of the Levant and fighting French Mandate rule. His brother Hafez was a high ranking officer in state security.

But then, in 2014, something strange happened. Hafez was decommissioned after one of his units started a battle at a checkpoint manned by men of another security agency. Rami Makhlouf still thought he was safe, and why not? His companies also ran radio stations, private “universities”, even hospitals. Like any other Syrian oligarch (even if he was the only one to have a hand in up to 60 per cent of the Syrian economy), he regarded the US personal sanctions levied against him as if they were medals of honour. He was in this for the long run.

Then Bashar rattled the chains. Unpaid taxes – was this idea inspired by Putin’s accusations against his own former oligarchs? – had to be paid. And debts. Rami Makhlouf paid. And paid. And on Facebook last week, he was even talking about “inhumane” security forces, a description which some of his fellow citizens might have far greater reason to use against them.

His facebook appearance suggested he saw himself as a tragic figure, almost Shakespearian, as his own senior officials were picked up, one by one, by the state’s security apparatus. But Syrians might find another, more prosaic figure coming to mind: a powerful businessman of Italian origin, a native of Chicago much beloved because he donated to charities — but eventually brought low by charges of tax evasion.

Al Capone died aged only 48. Makhlouf is today only 50.

He was a man faithful to his regime, nevertheless. Makhlouf maintained more than 50,000 Syrians in full employment and 30,000 in Syriatel. When the uprising began against Bashar al-Assad in 2011, he sent out a new contract to all his employees: any of them who protested against the government – against their country’s flag, against the Syrian army, or against their president – would immediately be “asked to resign”.

That’s one reason his demise has proved such a shock in a country now enduring the greatest cash crisis of the war – indeed, the greatest economic crisis in Syria’s history. Not since former defence minister Mustafa Tlass’ son, Brigadier General Manaf Tlass of the Republican Guard, defected in 2012 – and, before that, the exile of Bashar al-Assad’s uncle Rifaat who attempted to take power from Hafez el-Assad in 1984 — has such an earthquake rippled across Syria. Rifaat, as Rami Makhlouf knows, is now in hospital in Paris while facing charges of money laundering and tax fraud.

So how will Syrians, their currency now collapsing, regard the defenestration of Rami Makhlouf? They may see this as proof that no one is too powerful to be prosecuted. Didn’t Assad talk about corruption this week (without mentioning his cousin, of course)? Or – this for the Sunni, as well as the Alawite, middle classes – perhaps this means that if even the cousin of the president can be held accountable, there is still hope of reform?

But we have heard that promise of reform before – from Assad pere et fils – and thus the pitiful Facebook theatricals might represent the biggest crack in the inner circle of power since the Tlass defection. Or Rifaat’s exile.

After each internal conflict in Syria, there has been a shift of power – and this is a serious change in the dynamics of the ruling class in Damascus. When the war was going badly, Makhlouf was a helping hand for the president when helping hands were scarce. But far better now, the powers-that-be suggest, that "serious" management of the state’s affairs should rest solely in Bashar al-Assad’s office – or with other businessmen who might be less inclined to think they were part of the ruling class.

And who, one must ask, might they be?