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.
