Rami Makhlouf, the maternal cousin of Syria's Bashar Al Assad, has made a rare public statement addressing the president over an order to seize his assets.
In the video on Facebook, the wealthy businessman said he had offered money to "assist people" in Ramadan, but had received threats against his companies.
“After reports about a donation we planned to make during the holy month of Ramadan to assist our people, things went out of control," Mr Makhlouf said.
"We received threats to stop our work, simply because we dared to publicly offer assistance to the needy. Why the more grants we offer, the more the curse we receive?”
Mr Makhlouf owns the Syriatel communications company. It has about 11 million users and pays 12 billion Syrian pounds (Dh86.1m/US$23.4m) in tax and 50 per cent of profits to the regime, he said in the video.
He said a government committee asked him for between 125bn and 130bn Syrian pounds for tax fraud, and said Mr Al Assad should oversee distributing the money from his company to the poor as "all the others cannot be trusted".
"I respect your decision, Mr President, and it's my duty to carry it out but I'm begging you to give the requested funds to those in need," he said.
The Syrian regime has ordered a measures against companies owned by Mr Makhlouf and his shares in Syriatel.
Mr Makhlouf stressed that 50 per cent of the income from his companies already goes to the regime.
"If we profit 1 Syrian lira then the government also gets 1 Syrian lira, this is aside from the taxes that we already pay," he said.
Mr Makhlouf expressed his willingness to pay the amount imposed by the government, despite calling it "unfair".
"How can someone steal from his own country?" he said.
Mr Makhlouf said the requested funds did not comply with the terms of the contract between his companies and the government, and did not take into consideration the company's income and expenses.
He asked for the money to be taken in instalments so that his businesses do not collapse.
The Syrian regime is forcing entrepreneurs and businessmen to pay millions of dollars as of last year to the Central Bank to save the country from bankruptcy.
The Finance Ministry decided last week to seize the assets of Abar Petroleum Service, an oil and gas shipping company owned by Mr Makhlouf and registered in Beirut.
They said he had breached import rules and smuggled products worth 1.9bn Syrian pounds into the country without paying the fees.
Mr Makhlouf has been under international sanctions since 2008 because of his support for the regime.
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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Director: John McPhail
Starring: Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Mark Benton
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