Reply #18: Sorry, InkAdict! I was polishing the radio telescope. [View All]

[Octafish]

The World's Billionaires

Sins of the Father?

Nathan Vardi, 03.18.02

Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire, spent the 1990s engaged in financial folly and funding what the U.S. government calls a front for Al-Qaeda. Now a new generation tries to escape the shadow.

In November Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz paid a visit to the American consul general in the Saudi Arabian coastal city of Jidda. The 31-year-old Mahfouz wanted to pass the word on to Washington, D.C. He had heard President Bush's challenge and had an unambiguous reply: "We are with you, not the terrorists."

It was a calculated gesture, prompted by renewed grief for the Mahfouz clan. Trouble seems to stalk Abdulrahman's father, Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz. In 1999 there was the forced nationalization of his bank, Saudi Arabia's biggest. This followed by eight years the collapse of his biggest investment, Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), amid worldwide scandal. This time events had caught up with Abdulrahman himself. He had been a board member of the Muwaffaq ("blessed relief") Foundation, a charity that the U.S. Treasury Department labeled a front for Al-Qaeda in October.

The U.S. government has not accused Khalid and his family, estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, of funding terrorism, despite Abdulrahman's acknowledgment to FORBES GLOBAL that the foundation was the brainchild of his father, who funded it with as much as $30 million. Yasin al-Qadi, the Saudi hired to run the charity, has had his assets iced by the Treasury, which calls him a supporter of terrorism.

SNIP...

The Mahfouzes aren't alone in feeling this heat. Charities dubbed sinister by the Bush Administration are connected to other elite Saudi families. OPEC's oil price hikes in the 1970s created the largest transfer of wealth in the 20th century and produced ten known Saudi billionaires, more per capita than 80% of the industrialized democracies, including Japan, France and the U.K. The philanthropy coming out of those fortunes has flowed to Islamic partisans, and the benefactors are now being scrutinized.

CONTINUED...

http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0318/047.html