Jordan denies reports on King's Swiss accounts

Amman, Feb 22 (IANS) Jordan's Royal Hashemite Court has denied reports that King Abdullah II owned Credit Suisse accounts.The total balance mentioned in several reports is "inaccurate and exaggerated" due to significant duplicative counting, the court said in a statement.Those reports were published to defame Jordan and the king, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.The court reiterated that all international assistance was subject to professional audits, and their allocations were fully accounted for by the government and donor entities based on cooperation agreements subject to the highest standards of governance and oversight.The king's private assets and wealth have always been independent from the treasury and public funds, and they are administered by the Privy Purse, which is a directorate that has been at the court for over 70 years, it added.German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a network of journalists from around the world that sifted through the data, obtained the leaked records on more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts, the largest leak ever from a major Swiss bank.They records were published on Monday. According to the records, King Abdullah II held a single account worth 230 million Swiss francs ($223 million) at its peak.They also claimed that the monarch opened two new accounts with Credit Suisse in 2011. He had chosen a banker that shared his approach to secrecy, particularly surrounding his personal wealth.Over the next five years, the king was the beneficial owner of at least six accounts with Credit Suisse, while his wife, Queen Rania, had another.
--IANS ksk/

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