From a Bond villain lair in the rugged heights overlooking Damascus, the all-seeing eye of a notorious Syrian military unit gazed down on a city it bled dry. Many of the bases of the elite Fourth Division formerly run by toppled president Bashar al-Assad’s feared younger brother Maher now lie looted. But papers left strewn behind reveal how the man they called “The Master” and his cronies wallowed in immense wealth while some of their foot soldiers struggled to feed their families and even begged on the streets. Piles of documents seen by AFP expose a vast economic empire that Maher al-Assad and his network of profiteers built by pillaging a country already impoverished by nearly 14 years of civil war. Western governments long accused him and his entourage of turning Syria into a narco state, flooding the Middle East with captagon, an illegal stimulant used both as a party drug in the Gulf and to push migrant workers through punishingly long days in the gruelling heat. But far beyond that $10-billion trade — whose vast scale was exposed in a 2022 AFP investigation — papers found in its abandoned posts show the Fourth Division had its fingers in many pies in Syria, an all-consuming “mafia” within the pariah state. It expropriated homes and farms Seized food, cars and electronics to sell on Looted copper and metal from bombed-out buildings Collected “fees” at roadblocks and checkpoints Ran protection rackets, making firms pay for escorts of oil tankers, some from areas controlled by jihadists Controlled the tobacco and metal trades Mountain eyrie The centre of this corrupt web was Maher al-Assad’s private offices, hidden in an underground labyrinth of tunnels — some big enough to drive a truck through — cut into a mountain above Damascus. A masked guard took AFP through the tunnels with all the brisk efficiency of a tour guide — the sauna, the bedroom, what appeared to be cells and various “emergency” exit routes. But at its heart, down a steep flight of 160 stairs, lay a series of vaults with iron-clad doors. The guard said he had counted nine vaults behind one sealed-off room. He said safes had been “broken open” by looters who entered the office just hours after the Assad brothers fled Syria on December 8 when Damascus fell to an Islamist-led offensive, ending the family’s five-decade rule. Maher, 57, did not know of his brother’s plans to flee to Russia and escaped separately, taking a helicopter to the Iraqi border, according to a senior Iraqi security official and two other sources. He then made his way to Russia, they said, apparently via Iran. The chaos of their fall is apparent in the underground complex. Safes and empty Rolex and Cartier watch boxes still lie scattered about, though it is not known if the vaults were emptied before the looters arrived. “This is Maher al-Assad’s main office,” the guard said, “which has two floors above the ground but also tunnels containing locked rooms that can’t be opened.” In one corridor, a shrink wrap machine — probably used for bundling cash — was abandoned next to a huge safe.