Posted on 10/13/2001 12:09:56 PM PDT by Wallaby
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Terrorism's bagmen Paul McKay The Ottawa Citizen SATURDAY OBSERVER, Pg. B1 / Front September 29, 2001 Saturday Final EDITION
A former Nairobi car importer and a Yemeni billionaire may have been the bankers behind Osama bin Laden's global empire of terror. Paul McKay reports.
Two imprisoned men, separated by half a planet and what amounts to a royal fortune, may hold the key to unlocking the secret of how Osama bin Laden finances his global terrorist network. But both are staying stone silent.
Khalid al-Fawwaz is an otherwise undistinguished former Nairobi car importer who lived in a nondescript London apartment and ran an obscure war relief group called the Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC) in London. Now being held in Britain's maximum-security Belmarsh prison, he faces criminal charges in the United States for abetting the 1998 terrorist bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed or wounded nearly 4,800 people.
U.S. court records -- especially evidence entered by British detectives who raided Mr. Fawwaz's apartment and the ARC office on London's Beethoven Street in 1998 -- leave little doubt that Mr. Fawwaz worked for Mr. bin Laden and personally knew those who were later convicted of the African embassy bombings.
Khalid bin Mahfouz is a controversial, Yemeni-born tycoon worth an estimated $2.5 billion U.S. He founded and ran the world's largest private bank until 1999, when the Saudi royal family quietly arranged for a government investment fund to buy out his 50-per-cent stake in the National Commercial Bank, then forced his dismissal. After a financial audit of the bank's $21-billion assets, Mr. Mahfouz was confined to a military hospital in Taef, Saudi Arabia. Some $2 billion has been reported missing. One of his sisters is married to Mr. bin Laden.
U.S. intelligence services want to know if some of that missing money went to phoney charities secretly funneling money to Mr. bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, including:
- The London-based Advice and Reformation Committee, run by Mr. Fawwaz and founded by Mr. bin Laden;
- An Africa aid group called Blessed Relief, whose directors included Mr. Mahfouz's son;
- A Kenya branch of Help Africa People, run by several men later convicted or indicted for the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania;
- The International Islamic Relief Organization, linked to terrorist bomb plots in the Philippines and India;
- The Kenya branch of war and famine relief group Mercy International, where key evidence used to convict the embassy bombers was found;
- A host of other Islamic aid groups working from Afghanistan to Kosovo, some of which were named by U.S. President George W. Bush earlier this week.
U.S. efforts to follow the bin Laden money trail also include searching the worldwide assets of dozens of banks, businesses and ventures in the secretive Mahfouz commercial empire.
It is no easy task. The Mahfouz family still owns a 30-per-cent stake in the National Commercial Bank, and controls worldwide assets through a private holding company called Al Murjan. One of its assets is Globalstar LP, which has licences for satellite broadcasts in eight Middle Eastern countries.
Some of the Mahfouz wealth is interlocked with another Saudi sheik and billionaire, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, who has since been appointed to run the private bank Mr. Mahfouz founded. Its clients include much of the Saudi royal family.
The Mahfouz/Al-Amoudi joint ventures include the port facilities in Yemen where the USS Cole was bombed by Islamic militants while it refueled, an alleged chemical weapons plant in Kenya that former U.S. president Bill Clinton ordered destroyed by missiles, and a Washington-based private company called WorldSpace, which provides satellite-based technology and programming to rural Africa and Asia.
Mr. Mahfouz is no stranger to missing money -- or controversy. He is a former director of the infamous BCCI international bank, which triggered a $12-billion U.S. bankruptcy scandal in the early 1990s.
Indicted in the U.S. for a $300-million bank fraud and facing civil claims exceeding $10 billion, he arranged a $225-million settlement with prosecutors and agreed to a permanent prohibition on owning banks in the U.S.
Mr. Mahfouz was also embroiled in a citizenship-for-sale scheme in Ireland, in which foreign millionaires were secretly courted to invest in Irish enterprises in exchange for coveted Irish passports and lucrative tax writeoffs. Mr. Mahfouz purchased 11 passports for Saudi and Pakistani nationals, but failed to make the promised investments.
Is there a connection between Mr. bin Laden and the two far-flung prisoners?
U.S. court records -- especially evidence entered by British detectives who raided Mr. Fawwaz's apartment and the ARC office on London's Beethoven Street in 1998 -- leave little doubt that Mr. Fawwaz worked for Mr. bin Laden and personally knew those who were later convicted of the African embassy bombings.
Seized computer hard drives revealed fiercely anti-American "holy war" edicts from Mr. bin Laden, to be relayed to European Muslims through the ARC "charity." A seized copy of the ARC founding documents bore Mr. bin Laden's signature.
Wiretap evidence, satellite-phone and fax records confirmed that calls were made to or from the now-convicted African embassy bombers and Mr. bin Laden's military lieutenant in Pakistan, Mohammed Atef (who is charged with Mr. bin Laden in the African embassy bombings). Seized bank records showed that Mr. Fawwaz held the signing authority for a Barclay's account for ARC.
The U.S. court records, and testimony from former bin Laden insiders, also indicate that Mr. Fawwaz purchased mobile phone technology that Mr. bin Laden or his aides used to make 140 calls to London and the Kenya bomb group from Afghanistan.
Seizures in Nairobi turned up phone bills for Mercy International in Mr. Fawwaz's name, and calls to that office from Mr. bin Laden's satellite phone. Much of the evidence used to convict four of the embassy bomb plotters in a later U.S. trial was found at the charity's Kenya office.
A former Mercy International staffer in Ireland, Hamid Aich, had earlier shared a Vancouver suburb apartment for three years with Abdelmajid Dahoumane, the accused accomplice of convicted millennium bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam. (Mr. Ressam, part of an Algerian bin Laden cell based in Montreal, has testified that he and Mr. Dahoumane concocted bomb ingredients to blow up the Los Angeles airport at a Vancouver motel in December, 1999.)
Mr. Ressam was caught at the U.S. border with the explosives in his car trunk, and convicted after a U.S. trial this year. Mr. Dahoumane fled Canada, facing criminal warrants here and in the U.S. He is believed to be in Afghanistan. Mr. Aich was arrested in Ireland, but released before police realized his connection to the Canadian-based Algerians. His whereabouts is unknown.
Mr. Fawwaz has denied any involvement in the terrorist bombings linked to Mr. bin Laden, and is fighting extradition from Britain to the United States. The evidence being used to support his transfer to the U.S. has not been tested at trial.
The U.S. has not filed any indictments against Mr. Mahfouz, and there is no public evidence linking him to any of the terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. However, the Saudi royal family restricted his travel last year after U.S. officials shared financial evidence gleaned from investigations following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and subsequent terrorist attacks against the USS Cole, U.S. military barracks near Riyadh, and the African embassies, a failed 1996 plot to bomb 12 airliners over the Pacific, and a failed plot to bomb U.S. consular offices in India.
American officials had earlier convinced governments in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and Britain to close bank accounts they had linked to Mr. bin Laden. U.S. press reports have disclosed that some wealthy Persian Gulf businessmen also were being "tithed" -- or bribed -- millions to fund Islamic charities that acted as fronts for Mr. bin Laden. One Associated Press report estimated the donations at $50 million, and another reported that even Saudi pension funds were being routed to the phony charities.
According to Indian police, a Bangladeshi man caught with explosives destined for U.S. consulates in India confessed to being a former worker for the International Islamic Relief Organization, and said the IIRO president had personally attended a meeting to plan the bomb attacks.
The Philippines chapter of the IIRO was formerly headed by Mr. bin Laden's brother-in-law, and was fingered as a front for Mr. bin Laden by a man later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Mr. Mahfouz's son was on the board of Blessed Relief in Sudan, a group reportedly linked to the 1995 attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia.
A Lebanese-born U.S. citizen based in Kenya, later convicted of aiding the African embassy bombings, testified that he began working for the bin Laden network after being recruited for the Islamic relief agency Al Kifa by al-Qaeda military boss Mohammed Atef.
He later served as a senior business aide to Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, then through Kenya-based groups that combined legitimate aid work and covert al-Qaeda business, such as preparing false passports, masking travel by bomb plotters, and exchanging money and reports with the bin Laden group in Afghanistan. Some of the convicted or at-large indicted bombers had previously worked for Help Africa People.
Mr. Mahfouz was a major investor with sheik Al-Amoudi in the $100-million El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Kenya, which was destroyed by U.S. missiles weeks after the embassies were bombed. The Clinton administration claimed the CIA had earlier detected bomb ingredients in the soil nearby. Yet subsequent lab tests and court actions leave little doubt the El Shifa plant was producing only human and veterinary drugs.
The nominal owner, now based in London and a long-time accountant to Mr. Mahfouz, later sued the U.S. government, which quietly settled the case and unfroze his assets in the United States.
The U.S. counter-strike against the El Shifa plant was almost certainly aimed at an innocent target. A simultaneous U.S. cruise missile barrage aimed at Mr. bin Laden himself in his Afghan hideout missed its intended target.
Those retaliatory strikes enraged many in the Muslim world, and may have prompted covert donations to the bin Laden cause from some of the Persian Gulf's wealthy businessmen. They also drew the wrath of military governments in countries like Yemen, Sudan and Ethiopia, where the Mahfouz/Al-Amoudi group often gets preferential projects.
One example is the multibillion-dollar project to modernize the shipping facilities in the Yemeni capital of Aden, completed a year before the USS Cole was hit there by a suicide barge. The lead investor and builder was the Mahfouz/Al-Amoudi Group, through their companies Yeminvest and Yemen Holdings Ltd.
Mr. Mahfouz and Mr. bin Laden were both born in Yemen, and are revered by many Yemenis. A U.S. probe into the terrorist attack there has been stymied by the Yemeni government, which openly supports a "holy war" against the U.S., and has vowed to provide sanctuary for jihad militants.
Paul McKay is a Citizen reporter.
His email address is: pmckay@thecitizen.southam.ca
Photo: Emmanuel Dunand, Agence France Presse ; An Afghani, man holds a poster of Osama bin Laden while trying to imitate his, posture in Quetta, Pakistan.; Colour Photo: Khalid bin Mahfouz: A, Yemeni-born tycoon worth an estimated $2.5 billion.; Colour Photo:, Osama bin Laden: Terrorism kingpin believed to be hiding in, Afghanistan.; Colour Photo: Khalid al-Fawwaz: Operator of an obscure, war relief group in London.
1) I don't recall the U.S. press mentioning at the time of the U.S.S. Cole bombing that Bin Laden was born in Yemen, or that he was "revered" by many of its citizens.
2) I seem to recall quite a PR campaign after the "aspirin factory bombing" that the Muslim owner had been unfairly maligned, etc. It might be interesting to check the FR archives to look at the specifics.
3)What are we now to make about the "aspirin factory" claims? Maybe it was more of a legitimate target than previously thought. Why the press spin?
4)BCCI again and again and again. I wonder why. (I am having trouble keeping track of all of the names.)
I'd love to know if Carlyle has a piece of this. It sounds right up their alley.
I agree with you that these money trails need to be followed up. And the intelligence implications. What did the Saudis know when they bought this guy out and dumped him?
Ciller's Consultant Tamraz May Testify in Congress
Tamraz linked to BCCI scandal
By Ugur Akinci / Turkish Daily News
WASHINGTON -- Roger Tamraz, the CIA-informant oil executive and banker who impressed then Prime Minister Tansu Ciller in 1995 with his promises of making the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline a reality (for an hefty fee) may soon show up in front of a Congressional committee investigating the allegations surrounding Democratic fund raising practices.Tamraz has contributed $177,000 to Democratic National Committee (DNC) to gain access to President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
Tamraz, who reportedly was very close to the Ciller family, told Los Angeles Times that "I had no trouble with access to Ciller."Tamraz was reportedly paid an undisclosed sum by Turkey in return for his help with the Baku-Ceyhan line.Since then nothing happened with the pipeline which Washington also supported in principle.
What Tamraz might also be questioned by U.S. lawmakers is his close links to the BCCI banking scandal and Ghaith Pharaon, his classmate from Harvard Business School.
In an extensive investigation of Tamraz' questionable links to Saudi money, The American Spectator monthly, in its May 1997 issue, exposed many of the links that Ciller's consultant had with a serious of bank bailout operations that he pulled off with his Arab partners.
The collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), one of histories most expensive bank failure that cost $12 billion to its shareholders when it was closed down in 1991, shows the active role played by Pharaon.
In 1973, Tamraz forms his own investment bank, First Arabian Corporation backed by such powerful Saudi investors as Sheikh Kamal Adham, also known as "Al-Turki" since he was raised in Istanbul.Adham is the brother of late King Faisal's wife Queen Iffat and known as Saudi Arabia's top intelligence officer with strong links to CIA.
Other shareholders in Tamraz' bank include Prince Abdullah bin Musaid bin Abdul Rahman; Sheikh Salem bin Ladin; and Ghaith Pharaon.The relations between Tamraz and Pharaon grew stronger after Tamraz bailed out Pharaon's Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit in 1975.
In 1977 Pharaon becomes part-owner of Main Bank of Houston.Co-owners of the bank include John Connally, Governor of Texas who was riding the same car when President Kennedy got shot in Dallas in 1963, and Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz.
Mahfouz' father was the founder of Saudi Arabia's largest privately owned bank, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia.
"Pharaon's troubles started in late 1977 when he bought the shares in the National bank of Georgia belonging to [then Governor] Jimmy Carter's political confidant, T. Bertram Lance," American Spectator story reads.Attending Pharaon's lavish parties in Georgia were likes of Carter himself and Alexander Haig, the former SACEUR of NATO [and later to become Secretary of State under President Reagan] who is well-known to the Ankara establishment.
It later turned out that National Bank operation was a front for BCCI and Pharaon was acting in fact on behalf of his BCCI backers."BCCI lost money steadily, seeking high profits by providing services to drug lords, arms dealers, spies, and terrorists -- and covering its deficits by fraud," Spectator said.
"BCCI concealed the fraud [to the tune of $12 billion] by dazzling Westerners with lists of wealthy Saudi shareholders, prominent among them Tamraz's partner Kamal [Al Turki] Adham and Main Bank investor Khaled bin Mahfouz.Both Adham and bin Mahfouz later arranged plea bargains with Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the most aggressive of the BCCI's investigators," said American Spectator.
Bin Mahfouz hired for himself a public relations firm in New York City, Abernathy MacGregor Scanlon (AMS), for "public relations and [facilitation of] media coverage," according to the U.S. Department of Justice records.
Incidentally, the AMS happens to be the same foreign lobby company that Tansu Ciller contracted in 1994 to provide communications counseling to the Turkish Prime Ministry.
Pharaon kept on buying and selling a number of banking ventures, including BCCI-controlled Washington D.C. bank chain First American Bankshares, and Miami's Centrust Savings Bank.Miami bank ended up losing $2 billion, making it one of the most costly S&L failures in American history.
Tamraz, although keeping his distance from Pharaon after the Bank of Commonwealth bailout, organized Paris-based Banque Arab et Internationale d'Investissments (BAII) which said to have provided cover for BCCI.In 1990 BAII was taken over by Banque Nationale de Paris after losing $100 million.
"Tamraz re-entered BCCI's orbit after it was seized in 1991," the Spectator said."He offered to pick up the pieces of the bank and pay depositors 90 cents on the dollar.But his still unidentified backers soon learned how much this offer would really cost, and the deal collapsed."
Pharaon is now a fugitive from federal and New York State bank fraud charges.Federal Reserve Board fined him $37 million for lying over taking over many of the banks he purchased on behalf of his Arab backers.
Tamraz and his links to BCCI and Pharaon were forgotten until Tamraz resurfaced in 1995, contributing vast amounts to the Democratic Party and trying to purchase his way into the Oval Office.This is also the same time when he told then PM Tansu Ciller that he was going to see President Clinton soon and talk to him about Baku-Ceyhan "peace pipeline," leaving the impression that the meeting would be between the two of them.Tamraz denies he ever said so to Ciller.
With his wide ranging links to Nagorno-Karabakh's hardliner self-proclaimed "president" (and now Armenian prime minister) Robert Kocharian, on the one hand, to Chinese state oil company officials who were supposed to bankroll the Baku-Ceyhan line, on the other, Tamraz continues to fascinate American observers as someone who could be holding the key to explain many questions in the scandal brewing around Democratic National Committee.His rumored testimony on Capitol Hill is awaited eagerly by his friends and foes alike.
By the way, how far from the World Trade Center is that investment banking outfit that Jordan went to work for in 1999?
In a separate but related deal, billionaire financier George Soros shelled out more than $245 million to buy 8.4 million shares of Globalstar stock from Loral for $29.17 per share. The investment represents a 4 percent stake in the proposed global mobile satellite venture. Loral purchased its shares from founding service partners DACOM, Daimler-Benz Aerospace, Elsacom, Hyundai, TESAM and Vodafone. Those service providers deposited $210 million, or half the sale proceeds, into an escrow account to fund the purchase of Globalstar gateways and user terminals. |
"Our founding service provider partners maintain a significant interest in Globalstar while taking advantage of an opportunity to realize earlier-than-expected gains on a portion of their initial investments in this venture," Schwartz said. "Second, Loral has been able to increase its equity ownership to 42 percent. In addition, Globalstar benefits strategically by the addition of the Soros funds as a strong new shareholder with an international scope." (Jeanette Clonan, Globalstar, 212/338-5658.) |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
With production in excess of some 2 million bpd at the time and an ambitious exploration program covering the entire Kingdom, Saudi Aramco proved that it has the technical and financial resources needed for the world's top producer. |
Yet despite that, the Kingdom decided to open up for foreign investment as part of its liberalization program aiming at attracting foreign investments and encouraging the private sector to take an additional role in economic development. With that in mind, it seems quite natural to have a special campaign to attract private Saudi oil firms working abroad. Over the past decade, three Saudi groups have emerged in oil business. The one most noticeably successful is Corral Petroleum, owned by Muhammad Hussein Al-Amoudi. It became known after it acquired the Swedish oil firm OK Petroleum, in 1993 and divided it into two companies, one dealing with distribution and retailing and the other with exploration and development. Corral and its subsidiaries are now active in such countries as Morocco, the United Kingdom, Angola, Lebanon and Lithuania in addition to Sweden. The second is Nimr Petroleum, founded in 1991 by the Mahfouz family. It has made production sharing agreements in Yemen, Romania, Malta; it also has dealings in Libya and the former Soviet republics. The third and the oldest of the private Saudi oil firms is Delta which is backed by some fifty businessmen and is involved in an ambitious upstream project in partnership with the American company, Unocal, to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The project seems to have got under way recently, though without the participation of Unocal. Now with the opening up of the Kingdom's hydrocarbon sector to foreign investors it seems logical to attract from abroad those private Saudi businesses that are active there. It is a new window and an investment opportunity to attract some of the huge amounts of private Saudi money that is outside the Kingdom. Even more important is the added value of helping to mature and strengthen the Saudi hydrocarbon industry by adding vital private elements to it. |
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