Yasser Abbas

Yasser Mahmoud Reda Abbas (; born 8 February 1962) is a Palestinian-Canadian multi-millionaire businessman and the son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. His conspicuous wealth has caused controversy in the Palestinian Territories.

Early life Yasser Mahmoud Reda Abbas is the second of three sons of Mahmoud Abbas and his wife Amina. He was named in honor of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In 1983, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Washington State University.

In the late 1980s to early 1990s, Abbas lived in Montreal, Canada, where he had a company which was mainly involved in renovating apartment buildings, and was able to obtain Canadian citizenship. However, FEMC's success didn't come without the assistance from the U.S. government: The company had been rewarded a contract for $1.89 million from the U.S. government during the Iraq war to build a sewage system in the town of Hebron.

As well as his tobacco business, Abbas is the head of an insurance company, a civil engineering firm and a real-estate business, all of which are headquartered in Ramallah, effectively the capital of the West Bank.

In August 2015, he was reported to be "tied to a corruption scandal" involving the misuse of public funds, and had paid $50,000 to acquire apartments in a luxury complex in Ramallah, for which Bahrain's foreign minister had been asked for $4 million to fund the private complex for Palestinian officials.

Personal life Abbas has two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage. In 2015, he married a Lebanese BBC Arabic Television presenter, Malak Jaafar.