It pays well to be a dictator who terrorizes his people with U.S. backing.
As ABC News reports:
"He had a very lavish lifestyle with many homes around the country," said [Aladdin Elaasar, author of "The Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future of Egypt in the Obama Age], who estimates the family's wealth is between $50 billion to $70 billion.
Remember, two of the men listed as the second and third richest Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - have $53 and $47 billion, respectively.
It's not just Mubarak. ABC writes:The politicians in Washington, D.C., make dictators and giant banks rich, at our expense. Too bad they are not helping the American - let alone the Egyptian - people. And see this.The family's net worth ranges from $40 billion to $70 billion, by some estimates.
Amaney Jamal, a political science professor at Princeton, said those estimates are comparable with the vast wealth of leaders in other Gulf countries.
"The business ventures from his military and government service accumulated to his personal wealth," said Jamal. "There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain."
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Jamal said that Mubarak's assets are most likely in banks outside of Egypt, possibly in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
"This is the pattern of other Middle Eastern dictators so their wealth will not be taken during a transition, she said. "These leaders plan on this."
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