by Jean-Charles Brisard

Jean-Charles Bris­ard explores the rela­tion­ships between the Bin Laden fam­ily and friends and Osama. The inter­con­nec­tion between these enti­ties is fright­en­ing. This book was banned for pub­lish­ing for three years until a Euro­pean court recently over­ruled that motion, which was ini­ti­ated by the Bin Laden Fam­ily. from the orig­i­nal text: Ben Laden: La vérité inter­dite. This is a trans­lated excerpt of the chap­ter “La Galaxie Bin Laden.”

Seven decades after its cre­ation, the fam­ily group SBG (Saudi Bin­ladin Group) is today directed by Bakr M. Bin Laden, born in 1947. The Board of Direc­tors is com­posed of Saleh Gazaz, Mohammed Bahareth, Abdul­lah Bin Said, Mohammed Nur Rahimi, Tarek Bin Laden and Omar Bin Laden. Devel­oped in Djed­dah, it is present on all five continents.

The group is com­prised of mul­ti­ple divi­sions and affil­i­ates. The prin­ci­ple hold­ings are the fol­low­ing, accord­ing to their activ­i­ties: Bin­ladin Group Inter­na­tional for con­struc­tion, present in Egypt, Jor­dan, Liban, Malaysia and the United Arab Emi­rates; Bemco for energy; Binladin-Bemco for elec­tric engi­neer­ing; Mohammed Bin Laden Orga­ni­za­tion for infra­struc­ture; Project Man­age­ment and Devel­op­ment Co Real Estate for real estate; the Al Salem Group for indus­try; Mimar Indus­trial Group for tex­tile, equally present in Lebanon, Great Britain and Spain; Casa­reen Con­tract Man­u­fac­tur­ing for cloth­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion in Great Britain; Palwa Beleuch­tungs Gmbh (or co.) and Palwa Iber­ica for crys­tal pro­duc­tion in Ger­many and Spain; Hazar Media Group in news­pa­pers in Lebanon, France, Great Britain, Egypt and the United Arab Emi­rates; United Saudi Main­te­nance & Ser­vices Co. for main­te­nance ser­vices; GFC and Casa­reen Retail Inter­na­tional for dis­tri­b­u­tion in Great Britain, Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore, Egypt, Lebanon, France and the United States; For­ship Ltd in the trans­port of freight in Great Britain, France, Egypt and Canada; Bin­ladin Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Co. (which became Baud Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in 1999) for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and the Mid­dle East Inter­na­tional Group (MEIG) in Switzer­land for pub­lic relations.

SBG has a Euro­pean antenna based in Lon­don. The struc­ture is directed by a British man, Leonard Cowk­ing and Bakr Bin Laden.

Leonard Cowk­ing is also a direc­tor, along with Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla, of Turkey Rock UK Ltd, a some­what ill-defined affil­i­ate of SBG.

The inter­na­tional affil­i­ate of SBG, Bin­ladin Group Inter­na­tional (BGI), based in Djed­dah, is equally directed by Bakr Bin Laden (CEO), Yahia Bin Laden (Gen­eral Direc­tor), Omar Bin Laden (Pres­i­dent) and Hasan Bin Laden (Vice Pres­i­dent) The Oper­a­tional Direc­tor for pub­lic works and air­ports is Abu Baker S. Al Hamed. The con­struc­tion divi­sion is coor­di­nated by Ahmed M. Bin Laden. Henry Sarkiss­ian is the direc­tor of indus­trial and energy projects. Mu’taz Sawwaf assures the direc­tion of the archi­tec­ture divi­sion and inte­rior design. Shafiq M. Bin Laden is a mem­ber of the Board of Directors.

Hasan, Vice Pres­i­dent of BGI, was equally a direc­tor of Irid­ium Mid­dle East LLC, given the Bin­ladin Group was a stockholder.

The affil­i­ate Binladin-Bemco and Mechan­i­cal Indus­trial and Power Con­tract­ing inter­venes in the elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing domain. It is directed by Henry Cabr­era and Bakr Bin Laden.

Among the mem­bers of the Board of Direc­tors fig­ures in Souren M. Sarkiss­ian, Henry M. Sarkiss­ian and Greg M. Sarkiss­ian. The cor­po­ra­tion is also a stock­holder in Bin­ladin Bros. for Con­tract­ing and Indus­try, directed by Bakr M Bin Laden, who is a stock­holder of Saudi Traf­fic Safety Ltd and the Ara­bian Aero­sur­vey Com­pany Ltd..

In Europe, the affil­i­ate Casa­reen Retail Inter­na­tional Ltd. was based in Lon­don and was involved in dis­tri­b­u­tion. It was directed by three Britons, Mark Adams, Thomas Payne and Nabella Khan until its dis­so­lu­tion on July 17, 2001.

Nabella Khan also per­formed exec­u­tive func­tions for Capex Ltd. She is also present on the Board of Direc­tors of Hazar Licens­ing & Mar­ket­ing Ltd. and Casa­reen Ltd, directed by Sadek Sawwaf.

One estab­lish­ment, Casa­reen France, was cre­ated on Octo­ber 6, 1992. It was located in Courbevoie in the Haute-Seine and was directed by Charles Nakhle, a Lebanese-born gen­tle­man, and then by Mohamad Kammourieh.

The SBG Group is equally rep­re­sented in Europe by Hazar Pub­lish­ing Ltd.. The com­pany is directed by Basim Nico­las Ziadeh, a Lebanese busi­ness­man. In France, the “Edi­tions Hazar” (Hazar news­pa­pers) is parked in Courbevoie and is under the direc­tion of Charles Nakhle also.

Basim Nico­las Ziadeh is a mem­ber of the “Con­fer­ence Nation­al­ist Arabe” (Nation­al­ist Arab Con­fer­ence), com­posed notably of Egypt­ian Islamists. It is near, or at the heart of, the Mona Al-Solh move­ment, a cre­ation of Hisham Al-Solh and Dalia Salaam Rhis­hani of the British Lebanese Asso­ci­a­tion of Lon­don, which is aligned with or col­lab­o­rates with the Azzam fam­ily (Azzam Pub­li­ca­tions), who openly sup­port Osama Bin Laden. Basim Nico­las Ziadeh is also involved with this move­ment with Diaed­din Daoud, Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the Egypt­ian Nassérist Party. He fre­quents the Sunni mosque Al-Azhar in Cairo (near to the name of the pub­lish­ing house he directs) which in Decem­ber of 1998 openly called for a jihad against the United States. Diaed­din Daoud has been arrested two times with mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (1977 & 1981). Osama Bin Laden is a Sunni.

Mu’taz Sawwaf, a Lebanese man who directs BGI, also par­tic­i­pates in the direc­tion of “Dar Al Reisha for Pub­lish­ing and Dis­tri­b­u­tion” which is located at the same address as Hazar Pub­lish­ing in Lon­don, along with Mustafa Kamal Kassas.

For­ship Ltd., based in Lon­don, pro­vides freight trans­port and has been in busi­ness since 1989. The com­pany is directed by Adnan Kro­n­fol, an Amer­i­can born on March 1, 1947, and Omar Youssef Sal­hab (who is involved with some other French affil­i­ates). In France, For­ship is rep­re­sented by the Lebanese-born Nou had Gho­lam.
SBG is rep­re­sented equally in Europe with an affil­i­ate involved in pub­lic rela­tions, the Mid­dle East Inter­na­tional Group (MEIG AG) in Zurich (Switzer­land). The com­pany, cre­ated in 1998, is directed by Hasan Bin Laden, Elis­a­beth Guggen­heim and Pierre Guggenheim.

The tex­tile activ­ity is per­formed by the Mimar Trad­ing Im Und Export Gmbh (“co.”). The com­pany was cre­ated in 1994 and is directed by Mohammed Ghazi Ragheb. It has an affil­i­ate in the Nether­lands called Mimar Trad­ing directed by U. Ozdemir, born on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1970.

At last, their activ­i­ties in the pro­duc­tion of crys­tal in Ger­many is per­formed by its affil­i­ate Palwa Beleuch­tungs Gmbh. The com­pany, cre­ated on March 30, 1987, is directed by Mohammed Ghazi Ragheb (direc­tor of Mimar Gmbh) and Ahmed Farid Al Azem and the major­ity share­holder is Basim Nico­las Ziadeh (Direc­tor of Hazar Pub­lish­ing in Lon­don and Mul­ti­me­dia Ven­tures Ltd. with Namir Michael Cor­tas – equally present in Hazar Pub­lish­ing — in Lon­don as well).
Farid Al Azem, Direc­tor of Palwa, is also a direc­tor of the Eqypt­ian Finance Com­pany based in Cairo, Egypt. This invest­ment and finance enter­prise was cre­ated in 1974 with the prin­ci­ple stock­hold­ers being the Amer­i­can Express Com­pany and the Saudi-based Olayan Group. Its Board of Direc­tors is com­posed of Farid W. Saad, Mounir F. Abdel­nour, Jamal W. Saas, Gilbert N. Gar­gour, Akram Abdul Hijazi and Elie Baroudi.

The Olayan Group is directed by Suli­man Saleh Olayan, born Novem­ber 5, 1918 in Onaira, Saudi Ara­bia, birth­place of Akram Ojjeh, Kamal Adham and Ghaith Pharaon.

Akram Abdul Hijazi, born on Novem­ber 14, 1939, of Greek nation­al­ity, directs the British com­pany World­mass Ltd..
Elie Baroudi is a mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors for Inter­na­tional Cor­po­rate Bank Inc. who touts Amer­i­can Express also as a share­holder.
As for Mounir Abdel­nour and his brother Fakhry Abdel­nour, th
ey direct the com­pany Mid­dle East Petro­leum and Inter­state, reg­is­tered in Panama, which four­nished Egypt­ian petro­leum to South Africa in the begin­ning of the 1980s in vio­la­tion of the embargo imposed by the United Nations.

Those oper­a­tions which defied the embargo were coor­di­nated by the South African Strate­gic Fuel Fund. Dur­ing the same time period, Fakhry Abdel­nour had a rela­tion­ship with an inter­me­di­are, one Emmanuel Shaw, ex-Minister of the Econ­omy for Liberia, who also par­tic­i­pated in these oper­a­tions by way of the Tiger Oil Com­pany (with his part­ner Marc Rich, the arms mer­chant impli­cated in Iran­gate, wanted by the FBI until his con­tro­ver­sial par­don­ing by Bill Clin­ton just before he left office).

Emmanuel Shaw directs an off­shore entity, First Liber­ian Hold­ings, one of the part­ners being Mazen Rashad Pharaon, Ghaith Pharaon’s brother, born on Sep­tem­ber 7, 1940 in Saudi Ara­bia, who was at the cen­ter of the BCCI bank­ing scan­dal in the mid-eighties. Mazen Rashad Pharaon is close to the Lybian Chief of State, the Colonel Muam­mar Kad­hafi, who he helps in the trans­fer of arms…

The Pharaon brother’s for­tune is essen­tially famil­ial. Their father was an adviser to the founder of Saudi Ara­bia, the King Abd al-Aziz. He occu­pied many diplo­matic posts in Europe between 1948 and 1954. Ghaith Pharaon was edu­cated in Paris, Liban, Syria, Switzer­land and then the United States, where he obtained an oil engi­neer­ing degree. In the mid­dle of the 1960s, he was intro­duced to a spy work­ing for the Saudi secret ser­vices at the time, Kamal Adham, who intro­duced him to a founder of BCCI, Agha Hasan Abedi, with who he real­ized many invest­ments and for who he helped coor­di­nate some of the fraud­u­lent oper­a­tions includ­ing the repur­chase of the National Bank of Geor­gia (NBG) and that of Finan­cial Gen­eral Bank­shares (FGB) before the bunk­rupcy of BCCI in 1991. Kamal Adham directed one of Ghaith Pharaon’s busi­nesses, Attock Oil. In 1996, Ghaith Pharaon ceded a part of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in BCCI to Khalid Salim Bin Mah­fouz and his brother, who then became own­ers of 20% of that stock.

Ghaith Pharaon is wanted by the FBI for Fraud and on Rack­e­teer­ing charges in the United States. He is the sub­ject of many indict­ments in New York, Wash­ing­ton D.C., Geor­gia and Florida as well as the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tic traits of the Saudi Bin­ladin Group is to asso­ciate in the prin­ci­ple invest­ments of con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures who play a large role in fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties around the world.

The Bank of New York-Inter Mar­itime Bank based in Geneva and directed by Bruce Rap­pa­port has been impli­cated in the BCCI scan­dal and the sale of Amer­i­can arms to Iran (Iran­gate) as a part­ner of Oliver North, who was at the time in charge of the trans­fer of those weapons for the National Secu­rity Advisers.

Inter Mar­itime Bank’s Vice Pres­i­dent at the time, Alfred Hart­mann, born Feb­ru­ary 21, 1923 in Switzer­land, was an ex-Director of the Banque of Com­merce and Place­ments SA (BCP), an affil­i­ate of BCCI and mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of BCCI. BCP has notably par­tic­i­pated in many fraud­u­lent oper­a­tions at BCCI. They report­edly had many spe­cial­ized affil­i­ates, in par­tic­u­lar, the British com­pany Inter Mar­itime Secu­ri­ties Under­writ­ers Ltd., which became Inter Mar­itime Man­age­ment SA, which shared the same address as the Bank.

The lat­ter is affil­i­ated to the Lebanese branch of the National Com­merce Bank (Saudi Ara­bia) located in Bey­routh. This Saudi bank is directed by Khalid Bin Mah­fouz, ex-director and share­holder of BCCI, under sus­pi­cion to have financed Osama bin Laden’s oper­a­tions. (see part IV)

On May 19, 1980, SBG formed, in Switzer­land, an invest­ment affil­i­ate named Cygnet SA, which became the Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany (SICO) in Geneva, with a base cap­i­tal of 1 mil­lion Swiss Francs. SICO is directed by Yeslam Bin Laden, the brother of Osama Bin Laden.

His admin­is­tra­tors are Bau­doin Dunand, born on Decem­ber 5, 1954 in Saint-Germain –en-Laye (France), Kjell Carls­son, born on March 7, 1951 in Lud­vikh (Swe­den), Frank War­ren, Bruno Wyss, Charles Rochat, El Hanafi Tiliouine and Beat­rice Dufour. Bruno Wyss also directs the auto­mo­bile import-export com­pany Sport-Garage Bruno Wyss in Zofin­gen in Switzer­land. Beat­rice Dufour, of Iran­ian descent, is the sister-in-law of Yeslam Bin Laden.

SICO (Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany) was set-up by Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates, a law out­fit cre­ated in 1972, in Geneva by Bau­doin Dunand, Jean-Jacques Magnin (born Decem­ber 5, 1940 in Geneva), Otto-Robert Guth (born Novem­ber 22, 1950 in Budapest) and Mohammed Mar­dem Bey (born Octo­ber 19, 1962 in Damas, Syria).

The Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany has par­tic­i­pated in many indus­tries, among them the CI Group Plc (metal con­struc­tion), John­son Fry Hold­ings Plc (finan­cial ser­vices), Starmin Plc (con­struc­tion) – with Talal y Zahid & Bros and Ahmed Abdul­lah — , the Water Hall Group Plc (con­struc­tion) – with Khereili Trad­ing & Elec­tronic – and Gold­e­nash Ltd.

Besides these oper­a­tions, SICO has made invest­ments through the Nicris Ltd. com­pany, located in Geneva, home of the Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates. The com­pany is directed by Yahia Bin Laden, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Saudi Bin­ladin Group based in Djeddah.

The Nicris Ltd. com­pany is a shareholder(18%) of the Amer­i­can phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal group Hybri­don Inc., located in Mass­a­chu­setts, directed by Eugene Andrews Grin­stead, Sud­hir Agrawal and Robert Ander­sen. In March 1998, Yahia Bin Laden con­trolled more than 7.5% of this Amer­i­can company.

Nicris Ltd. are equally a part of some other com­pa­nies like Inter­city Hold­ings (14%) parked in Bermuda, SEDCO in Djed­dah (14%), Pil­lar SA – French com­pany – (26%) and Faisal Finance Switzer­land SA (7%).

In 1997, Hybri­don Inc. pro­ceeded to trans­fer $1.034 mil­lion into a bank account at Bank Fur Ver­mo­gen­san­la­gen Und Han­del (BVH BANK), reg­is­tered in Dus­sel­dorf in Ger­many, some months before the bank­ruptcy of that bank in Novem­ber 1997 and the announce­ment of court pro­ceed­ings for money laun­der­ing and embez­zle­ment by the Pres­i­dent, Dominique San­tini, brother of ex-Minister (French) André San­tini, with the pro­ce­dure going to an inter­na­tional commission.

Dominique San­tini is also an admin­is­tra­tor at BAII Ges­tion, cre­ated in 1984, which han­dles deed trans­fers, and is an affil­i­ate of “Banque Arabe and Inter­na­tional Invest­ment” – BAII – located at the same address. BAII was aligned heav­ily to BCCI. One of its share­hold­ers had been the First Ara­bian Corp which the Amer­i­can Fed­eral author­i­ties brought to light in 1991 as being a part of BCCI’s attempt to fraud­u­lently repur­chase the Amer­i­can Finan­cial Gen­eral Bank­shares by a group con­sist­ing of Kamal Adham, Faisal Al-Fulajj and Abdul­lah Darwaish.

The Amer­i­can author­i­ties estab­lished that in 1985, Ghaith Pharaon was able to repur­chase Inde­pen­dence Bank thanks to a loan gained with the use of a credit let­ter orig­i­nat­ing from BAII. More­over, the Pres­i­dent of BAII, Chris­t­ian Lamarche, was one of the Board of Direc­tors at BCCI.

Faisal Finance Switzer­land SA is directed by Iqbal El Fal­louji. It acts as a branch in the Islamic hold­ing com­pany Dar Al Maal Al Islami (DMI) SA seated at the same address in Switzer­land. DMI is directed by the Prince Mohammed Al Faisal Al Saud.

The Saudi Eco­nomic and Devel­op­ment Com­pany (SEDCO), based in Djed­dah, Saudi Ara­bia, cre­ated in 1976, is an elec­tron­ics dis­tri­b­u­tion group headed by Mohammed Salim Bin Mah­fouz, born on June 24, 1944 in Saudi Ara­bia. Its Board of Direc­tors is famil­ial and includes Khalid Salim Bin Mah­fouz, Saleh Salim Bin Mah­fouz, Abdul­lah Salim Bin Mah­fouz and Ahmed Salim Bin Mahfouz.

Its prin­ci­ple affil­i­ate, Al Khalee­jia for Export, Pro­mo­tion and Mar­ket­ing Co. or Al Mad­dah Corp. located in Djed­dah, is directed by Waleed Bin Mah­fouz. This pub­lic­ity com­pany was cre­ated in 1977 and is under sus­pi­cion by the United States to have made dona­tions to Osama Bin Laden.

More­over, SEDCO is one of the pri
nci­ple stock­hold­ers of Bin­ladin Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pany Ltd. (which became Baud Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions) in Djed­dah, directed by Saleh Bin Mahfouz.

Mohammed Salim Bin Mah­fouz is the founder, with Mohammed Saleh Affara (born July 21, 1934 of British nation­al­ity) of the Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (IDF) at Oxford, Great Britain.

There are many strange zones and alliances in the uni­verse of com­pa­nies owned by the Bin Laden Fam­ily. Their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is often dif­fi­cult to see due to the myr­iad of screen com­pa­nies but a line seems to exist with many shady networks.

Yeslam Bin Laden cre­ated on July 7, 1998, in Geneva, an air­line com­pany named Avcon Busi­ness Jets Geneva SA, with a start­ing cap­i­tal of 100,000 Swiss Francs. It was located at the same address as SICO. The com­pany is an affil­i­ate of Avcon AG, cre­ated in 1994 and located in Kloten, Switzer­land. It is directed by watch­maker San­dro Ara­bian, born on March 3, 1941 in Geneva, who now resides in Monaco.

The admin­is­tra­tors of Avcon Busi­ness Jets are Juerg Edgar Brand-Jud (Swiss), Alfred Mug­gli (Swiss) and the Uni­treva Co. in Zurich. Juerg Edgar Brand-Jud is on the Board of Direc­tors of many air­line com­pa­nies with Alfred Mug­gli. Uni­treva AG, equally a stock­holder in Avcon AG, is directed by Rolf Peter Fuchs.

Juerg Edgar Brand-Jud directs many com­pa­nies, notably Eunet AG in Zurich as well as the fol­low­ing in Zug: Eurofloats AG, G5 Exec­u­tive Hold­ing AG, Heliz Air Ser­vices AG, Posei­don Deriv­a­tives AG, Pre­miere Beteili­gun­den Gmbh, Facto Treu­hand AG, Gro­cor Group AG and Sky Unlim­ited AG.

San­dro Ara­bian con­trols many invest­ment com­pa­nies and real estate ven­tures in Switzer­land as well as in France. The more active is Sogespa Finance SA in Neucha­tel, presided over by Pierre-Alain Blum, born on July 31, 1945 in Neucha­tel, Switzer­land, who Claude-André Weber and the Agenda Hold­ing & Look Hold­ing SA are asso­ci­ated. In France, San­dro Ara­bian directs Par­look Hold­ing in Nev­ers given the Board of Direc­tors includes Michael Vau­clair (born on May 29, 1947 in Rocourt, Switzer­land) and Bruno Finaz (born on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1951 in Lyon, France). The hold­ing com­pany also con­trols Look Cycle SA in Nev­ers whose admin­is­tra­tors include Pierre-Alain Blum (Pres­i­dent of Sogespa Finance), Bruno Finaz and John Jellinek (born on May 30, 1945 in Chicago). The invest­ments of San­dro Ara­bian also include audio­vi­sual com­pa­nies in Paris includ­ing SPAD (with Pierre-Alain Blum) and Simar Films. Many of these struc­tures have dis­ap­peared today.

San­dro Ara­bian is also Pres­i­dent of LK Hold­ing in Nev­ers, in judi­cial liq­ui­da­tion since 1998. The com­pany was directed by James Ham­lin Mac Gee (born on Sep­tem­ber 20, 1940 in Salem, Dakota (U.S.). He was, from 1984 to 1986, in charge of for­eign rela­tions for the First Ara­bian Man­age­ment Co. (FAMCO) located in Boulogne-Billancourt (France) which also had a British affil­i­ate. The invest­ment com­pany was directed by Pierre Levine, born Decem­ber 27, 1951 in Plessis-Robinson (France). First Ara­bian Co, whose stock­hold­ers were Abdul­lah Bin Musaid of Saudi Ara­bia and Salem Bin Laden, was directed by Roger Tam­raz begin­ning in 1974, and was at the heart of the BCCI bank scan­dal. Roger Tam­raz also made invest­ments for Kamal Adham, one of the part­ners of Ghaith Pharaon and Khalid Bin Mahfouz.

James Ham­lin Mac Gee is also an admin­is­tra­tor of the Soci­eté Occi­den­tal pour the Finance et l’Investissement (SOFIC) located in Neuilly-sur-Seine. It is a real estate invest­ment com­pany directed by Jean-Pierre Calza­roni (born on August 29, 1940 in Cam­bo­dia) and Peter Bunger (born on Octo­ber 25, 1940 in Magde­bourg in Switzerland).

The estab­lish­ment of SICO is strange also..it’s off­shore struc­tures put in place by SBG in the Cay­man Islands, Netherland’s Antilles and the British Isles. There were cre­ated by the cab­i­net in Geneva. They are SICO Cura­cao (Antilles), whose Pres­i­dent is Yeslam Bin Laden and its admin­is­tra­tors are Saleh Bin Laden, Beat­rice Dufour and Charles Tickle; Falken Ltd. (Cay­man Islands); Tropville Corp NV (Antilles); Islay Hold­ings (Islay Island). Charles Tickle is the CEO of the Amer­i­can real estate com­pany Daniel Corp.

These inter­me­di­are struc­tures per­mit­ted the cre­ation of affil­i­ates in the 1980s: Saudi Invest­ment Co – SICO – (Lon­don) Ltd., cre­ated Novem­ber 15, 1984, dis­solved Decem­ber 15, 1992; Saudi Invest­ment Co – SICO – (UK) Ltd., reg­is­tered in Bris­tol August 2, 1985, dis­solved May 15, 1990; and SICO Ser­vices Ltd. seated at the same address as the first, reg­is­tered Sep­tem­ber 27, 1985, dis­solved Decem­ber 19, 1989.

These inter­me­di­are struc­tures have been pro­gres­sively sub­sti­tuted by the invest­ment com­pany Rus­sell Wood Hold­ings Ltd., an affil­i­ate of Tropville Corp and of Falkan Ltd.. It is located at 30, Great Guild­ford Street in Lon­don. It was cre­ated on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1987. Hanofi Tiliouine (also on the Board of Direc­tors of SICO in Geneva) and Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla (born April 9, 1949 in Tan­za­nia) are two administrators.

Rus­sell Wood Hold­ings Ltd. cre­ated, on June 9, 1987, an affil­i­ate called Rus­sell Wood Ltd., whose direc­tors include Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla (direc­tor of the par­ent com­pany), John Cyril Dor­land Pil­ley (born on Jan­u­ary 25, 1935 in Great Britain) and Seng Hock Yeoh (born on May 2, 1951 in Malaysia).

Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla had cre­ated on May 8, 1984 the Teqny Ltd. com­pany with Saj­jad Jiwaji (born on Sep­tem­ber 25, 1956 in Britain) as well as on April 30, 1985 the invest­ment com­pany Lon­share Nom­i­nees Ltd. parked in London.

Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla is also one of the direc­tors of the Saudi Bin­ladin Inter­na­tional Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian affil­i­ate of the Saudi Bin­ladin Group whose Pres­i­dent is Omar Bin Laden.

Rus­sell Wood Ltd. suc­ceeded to cre­ate a net­work of invest­ment affil­i­ates begin­ning in 1987: Globe Admin­is­tra­tion Ltd., cre­ated on Octo­ber 29, 1987 in Lon­don, an affil­i­ate of Islay Hold­ings whose direc­tor is Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla; Fal­con Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd, cre­ated on May 9, 1988 in Lon­don (same address as Rus­sell Wood), and directed by Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla; Fal­con Cap­i­tal Nom­i­nees Ltd. cre­ated on May 9, 1988 and whose direc­tor is Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla; Fal­con Prop­er­ties Ltd. in the Bahamas; Turkey Rock UK Ltd. (aka Tyrolese 350 Lim­ited) cre­ated on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1996 in Lon­don, with one of the admin­is­tra­tors being Leonard Cowk­ing (rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Saudi Bin­ladin Group in Europe); and Safron Advi­sors UK Ltd. (aka Tyrolese 359 Lim­ited) cre­ated on May 17, 1996 in Lon­don, directed by Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawalla and Basil Mehdi Al Rahim (born on June 14, 1953, American).

The Tyrolese invest­ment funds have a prin­ci­ple stock­holder called the First Ara­bian Man­age­ment Hold­ing Ltd. reg­is­tered in the Antilles. Its British affil­i­ate First Ara­bian Man­age­ment Co (UK) Ltd. is directed by Colin Granville Mur­ray. The reg­is­tra­tion also men­tions hold­ings by FAMCO SA (Saudi Ara­bia) and FAMCO Panama. FAMCO has had stock held by Salem Bin Laden and the Prince Abdul­lah Bin Musaid of Saudi Arabia.

What a mix of com­pa­nies! One can pos­si­bly see how there might be trou­bling rela­tion­ships between the net­works of known crim­i­nals cross­ing into com­mer­cial rela­tions con­sid­ered nor­mal as well as the struc­ture which has been put in place in order to hide the move­ment of money.

The Bin Laden fam­ily does have a pen­chant for secrecy. This is per­haps one of the rea­sons for the longevity of its priv­i­leged rela­tion­ship with the high­est pow­ers in the Saudi King­dom. For sixty years, not one of the fam­ily “affairs” (the arrest of Mahrour Bin Laden at the end of the 1970s, their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the BCCI Scan­dal, up to the entrance of ter­ror­ism, of Osama Bin Laden) has suc­ceeded in touch­ing the fam­ily group.

An anec­dote on that thought: A sub­con­trac­tor of the famil­ial group, after hav­ing given an inter­view to an eco­nomic jour­nal in which he let slip key num­bers of the group’s present con­di­tion, saw his con­tract purely and simp
ly cancelled.

The Bin Ladens hold too much of their priv­i­leges to their security.

How can we legit­i­mately sup­port the idea that no rela­tion­ship exists between the Bin Laden fam­ily and Osama Bin Laden, this same fam­ily that has eco­nom­i­cally sup­ported, for many years, his brother-in-law, Khalid Bin Mah­fouz, accused of hav­ing injected (up until these past few months) mil­lions of dol­lars to sup­port the activites of “ter­ror­ist” Osama Bin Laden? The mem­bers of this fam­ily are from the same gen­er­a­tion, they sit on the same Boards of Direc­tion, and share the same invest­ments. How can the Saudi Ara­bian peo­ple ignore the very pub­lic actions of this very pri­vate family.

There exists inside the King­dom of the Oil King a good which is widely spread out. They call it hypocrisy and the Saudis lap it up at the trough of the Occidentals.

From the Annex: The Car­lyle Group

“The Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal, nephew of King Fahd, has an unde­ter­mined par­tic­i­pa­tion in the funds of the Car­lyle Group and George W. Bush had been, from 1990 to 1994, a mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of Cat­erAir, an affil­i­ate of the Car­lyle Group. Khalid Bin Mah­fouz is indi­rectly aligned to George W. Bush due to Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, a Saudi investor and part­ner of Khalid Bin Mah­fouz and Ghaith Pharaon, stock­hold­ers of Harken Energy (11%) in 1987. Talat Oth­man, born on April 27, 1936 in Betu­nia (Pales­tine) sat on the Board of Direc­tors of that petrol com­pany. George W. Bush was Direc­tor from 1986 to 1993. Talat Oth­man is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Mid­dle East Pol­icy Coun­cil along with Frank Car­lucci. Lastly, James R. Bath, who rep­re­sents the U.S. inter­ests of Salem M. Bin Laden who, around the end of the 1970s, is invested in two com­pa­nies held by George W. Bush (ARBUSTO 79 Ltd. and ARBUSTO 80 Ltd.) for a total amount of around $50,000. The two enti­ties were fused with Harken Energy.”