Global Financial Integrity estimated illicit outflows from Syria over 2000 to 2009 at US$23.6 billion. Table 9 gives TWO figures: normalised conservative US$15,288 million and non-normalised high-end US$23,641 million.
Claim ID
CH2-002
Exact or summary claim
Global Financial Integrity estimated illicit outflows from Syria over 2000 to 2009 at US$23.6 billion. Table 9 gives TWO figures: normalised conservative US$15,288 million and non-normalised high-end US$23,641 million.
Destination
02-numbers-that-fail
Status
QUALIFIED
Source
SRC-037 Kar and Freitas, Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009, December 2011, Table 9; SRC-041 the same organisation's press release, 1 December 2011
Source type
Research institute report; press release
Published
2011-12
Accessed
2026-08-10
Measure and scope
Cumulative illicit financial outflows, Syria, 2000 to 2009, in CURRENT US dollars summed across ten years, from the World Bank Residual model on change in external debt and the Gross Excluding Reversals trade mispricing model. THE BASIS IS NOT STATED IN TABLE 9 OR ANY COUNTRY TABLE and is established by inference, which this row shows rather than asserts: the report calls this series nominal non-normalized twice in its own narrative, which is the evidence that holds, the chart captions at Charts 5 and 6 being of the NORMALIZED series and therefore the wrong evidence; Syria's Table 8 row sums to exactly 23,641, so the figure is ten annual numbers added; and the country totals reconcile to the current-dollar regional Table 1 at 8,444,750.61 million. So it is a sum of ten price bases rather than a total on one.
Known conflict
The report itself states that unfiltered estimates are the robust end and that the truth may lie much closer to the upper end, so quoting the high-end figure is nearer the publisher's view than quoting the conservative one. The circulating claim prints one end without the other.
Downstream
Chapter 2 section 2; the incentives section, which uses the release as its demonstrated publication incentive
Action
The blog post the derivation originates in is registered at SRC-047 at TO_OBTAIN and is not held. Chapter 2 says so in the sentence that uses it. None outstanding. Both ends are printed with the publisher's stated preference. The aggregate is described as a residual and mispricing estimate and is NOT called theft: the report says its balance-of-payments component captures the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks and tax evasion undifferentiated, and its trade mispricing component is not theft at all. CORRECTED 11 August 2026: this cell routed the reader to SRC-047 at TO_OBTAIN. That row is superseded by SRC-059, which records four failed retrieval routes and sits at UNOBTAINABLE. The post is known only through SRC-041, the press release that quotes it.