The transfer would likely have remained secret had the large sum not raised suspicions among the South African financial and tax authorities, who investigated and deemed it taxable income. “Lady luck, it would seem, suddenly smiled on the applicant,” a South African judge wrote in 2015. Then in May 2013, her assets suddenly soared, thanks to a transfer of $15,299,965 from a Lebanese bank. In a promotional interview in a skimpy bikini conducted in conjunction with the publication of a swimsuit calendar in 2011, she said her interests included listening to Jack Johnson and Celine Dion, riding Jet Skis and flying helicopters with her father. She had appeared in energy drink promotions and swimwear calendars, but her reported annual income had never exceeded $5,400. He was then running family businesses in construction and other domains and living in France and Saudi Arabia. He was 43 at the time of the first transfer, in 2013.
van der Merwe were made between his two terms as prime minister, but while he was the head of his political party, the Future Movement. He makes frequent state visits to Paris, Washington and Riyadh and favors pro-Western policies, but heads a power-sharing government that includes Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party backed by Iran. Since then, the younger Hariri has remained one of Lebanon’s best known political figures. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth in 2013 at $1.9 billion, thanks largely to business interests he inherited after his father, Rafik Hariri, who also served as prime minister, was assassinated in Beirut in 2005. Hariri, a married father of three, was sufficiently wealthy to have made the payments himself. The gifts have no clear tie to Lebanon’s current economic woes and Mr. Every time we make an accomplishment, someone criticizes it.”
“It is true that we are going through a difficult economic situation and therefore we have to take bold decisions. [“Whatever the campaigns they launch against me and whatever they say, write or do, I will continue to work,” he said Tuesday in comments released by his office. Hariri said that negative news reports would not interrupt his work. [The day after this article was published, Mr. Hariri did not respond to questions sent to his media team about his relationship with the model, Candice van der Merwe, or any gifts to her. Hariri said the Lebanese government would declare an “ economic state of emergency” and push through austerity measures.
A looming financial crisis in Lebanon has set off antigovernment protests.
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