Who are the bin Ladens

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Today one of the biggest construction groups in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, the "bin Laden empire" traces its origins to Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadramout who emigrated from South Yemen to Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the century.

The beginnings of his activity are shrouded in mystery.

It is said that, having satisfied King Abdul Aziz with construction work on the royal palace, Mohammed bin Laden was awarded a much more prestigious contract: the renovation of Mecca. Whatever the actual circumstances, it is a fact that the Saudi royal family gave the bin Laden family--and group--exclusive rights to all construction of a religious nature, whether in Mecca, Medina or--until 1967--the Holy Places in Jerusalem. This enabled the bin Ladens to establish an industrial and financial empire which now extends far beyond religious construction projects.

Thanks to the renovation of Mecca, Sheik Mohammed bin Laden did not become merely Kin Abdul Aziz' official contractor, but his friend and confidant as well. This friendship has been handed down to their children. The bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the numerous offspring of King Abdul Aziz and they all followed the same path.

One of the connections which still explains many of the personal ties existing throughout the Middle East is the Victoria College in Alexandria, where the bin Laden boys attended classes along with schoolmates such as King Hussein of Jordan, Zaid Al Rifai, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king's physicians), Kamal Adham (who ran the Saudi [security] services under King Faisal), present-day contractors Mohammed Al Attas, Fahd Shobokshi and Ghassan Sakr and actor Omar Sharif.

The relationship of trust between the royal family and the bin Laden group has never been repudiated, although it is known to have undergone some serious crises. The most important was doubtless the 1979 Mecca affair. Because the bin Laden company had the exclusive contract for repairs in the Holy Places, its trucks entered and left Mecca at all hours without being inspected. And the rebels used "bin Laden" trucks to get weapons into the city. One of the bin Laden sons, Mahrous, was actually arrested on account of his ties with the Islamists, but was later freed. He is currently manager of the group's Medina branch.

The reason is as follows: after studies in England, where he had kept company with Fadli (son of the ex-sultan of the Abdin region in South Yemen, now leader of a Yemeni fundamentalist group and arrested in Aden last January), Mahrous struck up friendships with a group of Syrian Moslem Brothers in exile in Saudi Arabia. Subsequent Saudi intelligence investigations showed that these Moslem Brothers had taken advantage of Mahrous to use bin Laden trucks without his knowledge.

There was a touch of irony to the episode: when the insurrection broke out, the Saudi security services had to go for help to the bin Ladens, the sole parties in possession of maps of Mecca enabling the Saudi (and Western) police to find their way through the city's underground passageways.

Saudi authorities' decision to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden on 16 May 1993 does not threaten to affect the relationship between the bin Ladens and the royal family. Osama, one of Mohammed's youngest son, has been known for years for his fundamentalist activities. ...The arrest warrant was issued both because of his support for fundamentalist groups involved in terrorist operations in Algeria and Egypt and his ties with upstart religious circles that tried to establish an independent human rights organization in Saudi Arabia.

The ties of friendship binding bin Laden family members to King Fahd and his brothers make them prime confidantes and advisors. They play an obvious advisory role in Saudi-Yemeni relations. Still, they hold very few economic or financial interests in their ancestral homeland and certainly do not flaunt their family origins.

King Fahd's two closest friends were: Prince Mohammed Ben Abdullah and Salem bin Laden, who died in 1988.

Like his father in 1968, Salem died in a 1988 air crash...in Texas. French Intelligence made an allegation that: He was flying an aircraft which had been bought in July 1977 by Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd. The plane's flight plans had long been at the center of a number of investigations. According to one of the plane's American pilots, it had been used in October 1980 during secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries. Nothing was ever proven, but Salem bin Laden's accidental death revived some speculation that he might have been "eliminated" as an embarrassing witness. In fact, an inquiry was held to determine the exact circumstances of the accident. The conclusions were never divulged.

There was also a political aspect to Salem bin Laden's financial activities. Like Ali Ben Moussalem, Salem bin Laden played a role in the US operations in the Middle East and Central America during the '80s.

After winning its spurs in the rebuilding of Mecca, the group extended its activities to the broad area of construction and infrastructural works, the Mecca-Medina highway, tens of thousands of housing units, etc., It also entered into agriculture, irrigation and representation of foreign groups (Audi, Porsche and the Dutch Heras Hekwerk group, which it represents for fencing and steel distribution). At the beginning of the `80s, it associated with Hunting Surveys Ltd (UK) for prefab construction and with the Dutch Pander Projects group for distribution of luxury products.

The group is extremely discreet with regard to its financial activities, contracts and projects. On the one hand, the group is a family business and does not have to account to anyone; on the other, its ties with the royal family increase its aura of mystery. Its main contracts are not decided at the industrial or economic level, are not run through the Saudi bureaucracy, but instead emanate directly from discussions held with the seraglio of power.

There have been many instances of companies which have seen their contracts withdrawn after having made their association with the bin Laden group the object of publicity judged inappropriate by the group.

This concern for avoiding any and all publicity is also emphasized by the fact that, in contrast to the majority of Saudi companies, the bin Laden group rarely if ever buys advertising space in industry publications.

Rarely, then, does one know in advance just what the next bin Laden project will be: generally, the information is there when it is all over. A number of significant projects have been noted in Saudi Arabia itself during recent years.

With over 40,000 employees, the bin Laden group in Egypt, managed by Abdul Aziz bin Laden, is that country's largest foreign private group. Sheik Salem had good relations with one of the largest local contractors, Osman Ahmed Osman, going back for many years. Together with the Saudi Shobokshi group, the bin Laden group is currently negotiating a $400 million contract for construction of a paper plant.

The bin Laden group, represented by Yehia bin Laden, is also holding negotiations with the Lebanese authorities for a $50 million share in the project to rebuild central Beirut, within the framework of the Solidere project and in conjunction with the Al Baraka group and the Ben Mahfouz group. In 1981, the bin Laden group also set up a local company, Sarco SAL, directed by the Sarkissian brothers, but which has not shown any activity.

The bin Laden group's domestic and regional activities are complemented by international operations. The group set up a representative firm in London, Binexport, in November 1990, but its international business is handled by the SICO offices in Geneva.

The bin Laden family has been present in international finance for many years. With regard to France, this was the case with the Banque Al Saoudi, whose vicissitudes in recent years are common knowledge. Shored up by Banque de France in 1989 to avoid bankruptcy, it was partially taken over by Banque Indosuez, becoming Banque Francaise pour l'Orient, which has just merged with Rafik Hariri's Mediterranee group.

It is interesting to note that the bank's honorary chairman was none other than Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd, and its board of directors included Sheik Salem bin Laden, Sheik Bogshan and Khalid Ben Mahfouz. Banque Al Saoudi and Indosuez' special connections in the Middle East were instrumental in financing a portion of the weapons contracts of the `70s and `80s.

Banque Al Saoudi was 75%-owned by the Paris-based Saudi Arab Finance Corporation, which also controlled a number of other companies: 75% of Saudi Finance Corporation (Saudifin), headquartered in Geneva and in turn controlling the Saudi Arab Finance Corporation and the Arab Finance Corporation International, both in Luxembourg..

Generally speaking, the same set of shareholders was involved: Salem bin Laden, Khalid Ben Mahfouz, Salam Ahmed Bogshan, Saad Khalil Al Bahjat, Taha Baksh, etc.

In London, the bin Laden group also controls the Abdoulla brothers' Evered Holdings.

Since 1980, the bulk of the bin Laden group's international activities are routed through the Geneva offices of Saudi Investment Company (SICO), which was established on 19 May 1980 and whose capital was increased to SF100 million on 30 April 1991.

Located at 13 rue Ceard, the company is chaired by Yeslam bin Laden. Board members are Beatrice Dufour, Baudoin Dunant and Tilouine el Hanafi.

Beatrice Lafour is Yeslam bin Laden's sister-in-law. She is of Iranian origin and is married to a Swiss financier.

Baudoin Dunant, one of French-speaking Switzerland's leading lawyers, is on the boards of over twenty companies in Geneva, Fribourg, Morges, Nyons, etc. He received international publicity in 1983, when he represented Swiss banker Francois Genoud. Genoud, an admirer of Hitler and heir to the rights to Geobbels' writings, had helped finance the FLN during the Algerian Ward and was on trial for participation in international terrorism.

This unseemly publicity did nothing to shake the confidence of Yeslam bin Laden, doubtless an indication that the lawyer is top-notch in his profession (he is also counsel to the financial group of William Kazan , who is currently liquidating a major portion of his banking investments).

During the `80s, the board of directors also included members of the Swiss Wyss family, a branch of which controls the Holderbank Company, which has just signed a $100 million contract with Qatar National Cement. Also on the board were members of the Shakarshi family, whose name is linked to a money-laundering scandal and drug trafficking in Zurich. A Shakarshi family member was also a director of the SICO London branch.

As a result of these scandals and bent on avoiding any publicity, the bin Ladens decided that it was necessary to break publicly with the Shakarshis. In actual fact, the Shakarshis were never overly troubled and it appears that the Zurich company was just another CIA front used to finance the Afghan resistance.

The tie between Yeslam bin Laden and the Shakarshi family would thus seem quite consistent with both family and royal policy. Our information tells us that Yeslam bin Laden continues to maintain relations as usual with the Shakarshi group.

One might also note that the chairman of board of the Zurich Shakarshi company was Dr. Hans Kopp. Kopp is an important lawyer known for his international activities, particularly with the American intelligence services since the`60s, and is close to the Swiss defense industry (Oerlikon-Buhrle/Contraves).

The Geneva-based SICO is the parent house for the Group's international financial activities and investments, with branches in London and Curacao. The Curacao branch, established in 1984, manages the bin Laden group's partnership with the American Daniels Realty Corporation (Duspic), part of the Fluor Corporation conglomerate. It is partly through the bin Ladens' influence that the Fluor group was one of the major recipients of reconstruction contracts in Kuwait.

Despite a few recent attempts (particularly with the Swiss Contraves group), the bin Laden family has never been directly involved in weapons contracts and has never been bent on adding this activity to its portfolio.

At most, it might be said that the activities of Salem bin Laden in the context of Irangate and Contragate, or of Yeslam bin Laden within his association with the Shakarshi family, have placed the family at the center of these negotiations, but solely as a guarantor or as a representative of the interests of the royal family. The real contracts have been signed directly by members of the royal family: Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd or Prince Saud Ben Nayef.

The bin Laden family (and Yeslam bin Laden in particular) have thus had long-standing and close ties to the London/Geneva-based Albilad company, created in the`70s by Mohammed Ben Fahd and taken over by Saud Ben Nayef in 1984. Albilad was the main instrument for negotiation of the Anglo-Saudi Al Yamama agreement. Saudi interests were represented by businessman Wafik Said, while the British side was represented by Jonathan Aitken, currently a minister in the Major government. It might be noted that a major player in these negotiations was none other than Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister and very close to Wafik Said.

Nonetheless, while the bin Laden group does not deal directly in armaments, it is an obvious presence in the big military-related construction contracts. We have mentioned a few of these above. At present, its most important contract is for the Riyadh Airport, through the intermediary of the Al Salam Aircraft company, in the framework of the compensation contracts stipulated by the Peace Shield agreement.

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The Petards Group plc website in 2014:

Raschid Abdullah - Executive Chairman

Raschid who was appointed in January 2013 is also executive chairman of Water Hall Group plc, an AIM listed company which has a 29.99% shareholding in Petards. He was previously executive chairman of Evered Holding plc, a fully listed public company specialising in industrial and quarry related products, from 1982 to 1989. Raschid started his commercial life within the construction industry in the areas of building product supplies and the provision of specialist subcontracting services starting his first business in 1971 which he sold to a competitor in 1976. He then joined the family business providing a range of services to clients in the Middle East. These included owning and operating family and procurement offices for prominent families and their businesses, and co-investing in the UK stock market with a number of Middle Eastern families. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Osman Abdullah - Non Executive Director

Osman Abdullah was appointed to the Board in September 2010 as a representative of Water Hall Group plc. He was previously Chief Executive of Evered Holdings plc, a fully listed public company specialising in industrial and quarry related products from 1981 to 1989. He also served as a non executive director of Umeco plc from 1993 to 2005 which achieved considerable acquisition and product led growth over that period. He has a broad range of commercial experience with industrial and supply chain businesses together with extensive experience in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

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WATER HALL GROUP PLC
Mr Raschid Michael Abdullah
Mr Roger Dixon Musson

Previous Directors and Secretaries include:
Rt Hon Lord Cecil Edward Parkinson Of Carnforth 20-07-1992 17-01-1995

Cecil Parkinson was also on the board of the CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY CENTRE with both SERENA MARY ROTHSCHILD and EVA LOUISE RAUSING among others.

Another character briefly at the CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY CENTRE was DR MAURICE LIPSEDGE, a psychologist who would have sessions with Trevor Rees-Jones after Princess Diana's death and speak for him at the hearing. Lipsedge claimed Rees-Jones remembered nothing of the crash.

Lipsedge had been Princess Diana’s psychiatrist.

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BAUDOUIN DUNAND associated with SICO, is also supposedly a prominent attorney in Geneva with the WILLIAM KAZAN financial group.

In November 1998, The Independent reported:

Nadia said she was "presented" soon afterwards to Robert De Niro but nothing happened; she said she was urged by Bourgeois to have sex with Fibak, but refused. That summer, she was packed off to Saint Tropez, where she was told her career would finally take off. Instead, she said, she found herself on a yacht - with another girl - performing sexual acts with the Qatari millionaire, William Kazan.

Bourgeois, an unkempt man with lank grey hair, who stood in court with the help of a cane, denied the charges of proxenetisme, or pandering (prostitution, as such, is not illegal in France). All he had done, he said, was "present" a few girls to his friends. Challenged by the court president to say whether he knew that Nadia was prostituting herself, Bourgeois admitted: "With Sarde, yes. With Kazan, I only knew later."

A Swedish girl, Julia, 16 at the time, also said that she had been taken aboard Kazan's yacht for photo sessions, where she claimed, she was sexually attacked. Bourgeois said Julia had gone aboard the yacht willingly and made no complaint at the time. Girls would be persuaded to have lurid photographs taken to circulate to film companies and modelling agencies. Instead, the court was told, Bourgeois would send folders of the pictures, on approval, to potential clients. If the girls refused to play along, they were warned that the photos would be sent to their families.

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Oil-related business deals between George W. Bush and several powerful Saudi Sheikhs, from 1979 to 1991, lacked both ethical integrity and Congressional intelligence oversight, since Bush used the same Saudi-controlled global banking network that was also used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and by Osama bin Laden. once a CIA asset. Yet, several abbreviated FBI and Congressional investigations later, this explosive truth still remains mostly hidden from the American public.

Consider the facts. For decades the current President's father, former President George H. W. Bush, has had publicly close ties to the oil-enriched Saudi royal family in regards to both politics and business. Then consider that the bin Laden family is the most entrusted of all families by the Saudi Royal household. For many decades, every Saudi King has granted the bin Laden’s giant construction conglomerate exclusive contacts to restore all castles and holy sites within the country, and for numerous public works and infrastructure projects.

Also, consider that soon after bin Laden's September 11 attacks, it was public knowledge that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, as was critical funding for bin Laden's al Qaeda network and for his earlier Arabic anti-Soviet fighters in Afganistan. Al Qaeda's predecesor was, in fact, bin Laden's 50,000 highly disciplined "Arab-Afghan" mujahideen, who were the most elite among Ronald Reagan's famous "freedom fighters", that were covertly given massive U.S. CIA support.

What is not generally known is that in years past, George W. Bush had several important business relationships with principle cohorts of Osama bin Laden's long-term financial sponsor, the powerful Saudi multibillionaire and banker to the king, Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz.

Bush's Deal with Saudi Sheikhs: A Reason to Cover-Up

This amazing story centers around and begins with the fraud-enshrouded Saudi National Commercial Bank (NCB), until recently owned by Sheikh Mahfouz. Following Osama bin Laden's U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the Saudi Arabian Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, that Mahfouz had channelled tens of millions of dollars into terrorist accounts in London and New York. While treasurer to the Saudi King, Mahfouz plundered 2 billion dollars of the 21 billion dollar National Commercial Bank, of which he was then president.

The Saudi National Commercial Bank was affiliated with a global network of many Mahfouz-connected banks, including the InterMaritime Bank of Geneva and New York, whose vice-president brokered a 25 million dollar investment into George W. Bush's Harken Oil and Gas in 1987. Thus, the InterMaritime Bank was once related to the current President Bush through its Mahfouz-connected VP, a man named Dr. Alfred Hartmann. The InterMaritime Bank was also involved in multiple covert CIA operations.

During the 1980's, Sheikh Mahfouz's banking syndicate performed major CIA-inspired banking operations for such former CIA assets as Osama bin Laden, as well as for Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega and other drug dealing generals, such as in Pakistan. Much of this is documented in the 1992 U.S. Congressional testimony of Senator John Kerry.

George W. Bush, for his part, had important business relationships not only with Dr. Hartmann, but with a total of nine prominent individuals that are central to Mahfouz's financial empire, including both the “Godfather of Saudi Intelligence” and his partner, a billionaire Bush campaign donor.

If George W. Bush and Sheikh Mahfouz were ever coexisting in each others financial network, then the question is begged as to whether any personal or political reasons exist for the President to have censored the Saudi section of the Senate's report on bin Laden's September 11 attacks.

When two principal individuals are directly connected to the same group of nine persons -- with each of the the eighteen subsequent relationships having zero degrees of separation -- then one would say that a "network" exists that profoundly connects the two principals in question.

If personal motives, such as control of public perception, existed for the president to have covered up his "indirect" involvement with Sheikh Mahfouz, then Bush's claimed reason for the 911 report censorship could be a lie. Willful presidential deception would have occurred when Bush stated as the reason for his censorship, the need "to protect intelligence 'sources and methods'".

In politics, truth is often stranger than fiction: Sheikh Mahfouz's sister is actually one of four wives of Osama bin Laden, making the two men brothers-in-law, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony. Thus, Osama bin Laden is sleeping with the sister of Bush's business partner. Really.

The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International

If you consider the key players and follow the money trail, you will see that from a foreign policy perspective, Bush's his connection to bin Laden's banker, Mahfouz, is far more interesting than Bill Clinton's imbroglio with Monika Lewinsky.

Firstly, consider the fact that Mafouz's Saudi National Commercial Bank was affiliated with the InterMaritime bank, whose president, Bruce Rappaport, was deeply implicated in the BCCI Affair. That was the 1992 scandal of the infamous Mahfouz-dominated Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) involving secret accounts for illegal arms sales to Iran. To accomplish that task secretly, Rappaport partnered with Oliver North, who was in charge of the National Security Council during the Reagan-Bush administration. The BCCI affair was documented in the 1992 Senate Kerry Committee report.

With numerous branches in dozens of countries, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was also the drug-money laundering bank for the Pakistani generals, simultaneously essential long term bin Laden supporters, nuclear proliferators and American allies. Paradoxically, Robert Gates, the CIA director under former President George Bush Sr., referred to BCCI as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" in Senate testimony.

Most important, consider Dr. Alfred Hartmann, the multi-site executive, who was both the InterMaritime Bank's Vice President and no less than the chief financial officer of Mahfouz's BCCI Holdings of Luxembourg. Simultaneously, Dr. Hartmann was also the managing director of a subsidiary of BCCI, the Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP) in Geneva. It was BCP that helped to finance the business for the vice-president's son, George W. Bush.

In 1987, the original plan for George W. Bush's Harken Oil and Gas Company was to obtain 25 million dollars in investment capital from BCP, a joint venture between the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and BCCI, with BCCI as the controlling interest.

Harken's financing by BCP of Geneva was originally structured by billionaire Bush donor, Jackson Stephens from Little Rock and apparently did not comply with U.S. banking regulations, according to the Asian Wall Street Journal. In the course of restructuring the deal, UBS decided to sell its shares as soon as possible.

Stephens obligingly found a new buyer for the UBS's share of Harken, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh. Sheikh Bakhsh was a principle shareholder in Mahfouz's BCCI until its 1992 collapse and a major investor in Stephens' own Worthen National Bank. Sheikh Bakhsh's purchase of 3.5 million Harken shares and eventually 20.8 percent of the total outstanding, is documented in U.S. Security and Exchange Commission reports.

In this way, Bush's Harken deal was concluded with the BCCI's Geneva subsidiary, BCP, whose managing director and man-of-a-thousand-faces, Dr. Hartmann, was also the chairman of the the Swiss affiliate of yet another criminal bank, the Italian Banco Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). According to the Congressional Record in 1992, Dr. Hartmann's bank, BNL was alleged by U.S. House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez, to have secured billions of dollars in illegally-used, weapons-directed loans from the first Bush administration to Saddam Hussein just prior to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

After 1996, George W. Bush’s Harken-investor, Sheikh Bakhsh, was a principle shareholder in Mahfouz's Middle East Capital Group, a British offshore investment bank involving the Saudi BinLaden Group (SBG), the bin Laden family's giant construction and investment conglomerate.

The Saudi BinLaden Group is partners with Mahfouz in the Saudi Investment Corporation (SICO). In turn, SICO was covertly involved in supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the late 1980's, in connection with the BCCI-controlled National Bank of Oman. Arranging SICO's capitalization of Osama bin Laden were the top two InterMaritime Bank executives, Alfred Hartmann of Harken and Bruce Rappaport, in addition to the infamous deceased CIA director, William Casey.

Thus, during the late 1980s, the ubiquitous Harken financier, Dr. Alfred Hartmann, was both rearming Saddam Hussein and supporting Osama bin Laden's Jihad. With BCCI Holdings having Dr. Hartmann as CFO, Hartmann was at the very center of Mahfouz's BCCI scandal, a more than 13 billion dollar bank loss, termed "the largest bank fraud in world financial history" by Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morganthau.

By 1990, Harken's financial practice look more like an "Axis of Evil" network than an oil company. The soup thickens when one looks at the overall business resume of our "CEO President" and that of his business partners.

Bin Laden's "Banker of Terror"

Khalid's bin Mahfouz's 4 billion dollar financial universe includes his brother, Mohammed, also a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, who replaced Khalid as head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank (NCB) after the scandal broke over Khalid’s massive 2 billion dollar embezzlement.

No stranger to the secret financing of his brother-in-law, Osama, Mohammed bin Mahfouz is the founder of the Al Qaeda-financing, Saudi Sudanese Bank. Mohammed bin Mahfouz is also the founder of the terrorist-directed International Development Foundation (IDF) located at the same Oxford address as the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) one of bin Laden's main recruitment centers.

With the “Saudi King’s banker", Khalid bin Mahfouz, as CEO, the Jeddah-based advertising agency, Tihama, was cited in 1999 as being an intermediary in the sponsoring of Al Qaeda.

Continuing the family tradition, Khalid's son, Abdul Rahman bin Mahfouz, is manager of the bin Laden-sponsoring charity, Blessed Relief, that received funds through the Saudi National Commercial Bank several years earlier. Blessed Relief is suspected of organizing a terrorist attack on Egypt's president Mubarak in 1995 and was found by the U.S. Treasury Department to have agreed to transfer millions of dollars to bin Laden. Could one even doubt that Abdul Rahman considers his aunt’s husband, Osama bin Laden, the greatest hero of Islam since Mohammed?

As if sealing a pact, the bin Mahfouz family holding company, the Saudi Economic Development Corporation (SEDCO) was located as of 1999 at the same Oxford address as the IDF and the IIRO. Mahfouz's SEDCO had as a president, the vice-president and CEO of the defrauded Saudi National Commercial Bank, Camille Chebeir.

Fathers and Sons: The Precedent of the United States

Consider Sami Baarma, another top executive of the Saudi National Commercial Bank (NCB), who is one more among the group of men forming the web connecting both Bush Presidents to archterrorist banker Mahfouz. As an example of interactions within the “Bush-Mahfouz axis”, NCB's Sami Baarma also sits on the board of Mahfouz's Middle East Capital Group (MECG) that had on its board, Harken-investor Sheikh Bakhsh. In addition, Baarma sits on the board of the Carlyle Group, which had former President George Herbert Walker Bush as a senior advisor at the moment of the 911 attacks.

Carlyle is the 11th largest military contractor in the U.S. and was a leading contributor to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Former President George H.W. Bush has visited Saudi Arabia at least twice to successfully court bin Laden family financing for Carlyle, whose long-term chairman was Frank Carlucci, an assistant CIA director and Defense Secretary under Reagan. Further establishing Carlyle’s elite intelligence pedigree, former President Bush was the director of the CIA during the Ford administration.

Seemingly above reproach, Carlyle's Sami Baarma was the director of two divisions of the Mahfouz’s Saudi National Commercial Bank (NCB), when the bank's money disappeared in the late 1990s; namely, the International and the Investment Services Divisions. Baarma then advised the next NCB president after this second Mahfouz banking scandal broke in 1998, who was none other than Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz’s brother, Mohammed.

Literally thriving after Mahfouz’s now forgotten scandal, Baarma sits on the international investment committee of George Bush Sr.’s Carlyle Group, while having simultaneously sat on the National Commercial Banks's Executive Management Committee.

Carlyle's Sami Baarma is also the CEO of the Pakistani Prime Commercial Bank, another Mahfouz-owned bank, that has as an executive board member, Abdul Rahman bin Mahfouz, the manager of the bin Laden-sponsoring “charity”, Blessed Relief. In 1995, Abdul Rahman and his brother, Sultan bin Mahfouz, both directors in the defrauded National Commercial Bank (NCB), made a 30 million dollar investment into George Bush Sr.’s Carlyle, held for their benefit by Baarma.

The current president, George W. Bush, was once a director of and held shares in one of Carlyle's components, the Caterair Company, between 1990 and 1994. Thus, both Bush President’s Carlyle tenure was during the period that 2 billion dollars of terrorist-directed NCB funds were stolen by Mahfouz, under the nose of Baarma, a top executive at both NCB and Carlyle.

After decades of massive, documented bank fraud, Mahfouz has merely relinquished a few posts and he has never more than paid a minor fine, by his standards. Moreover, his family still controls the Saudi National Commercial Bank.

To illustrate the overwhelming avidity of the bonds between politicians and the defense industry, consider former President Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker III, who is a senior couselor to Carlyle, alongside the former President himself. In that position, Baker has travelled to Saudia Arabia to counsel the bin Laden family on investments into Carlyle, once flying on the bin Laden's family-owned jet. Earlier, in 1985, James Baker sold his skyline-dominating Texas Commerce Bank Tower to Sheikh Mahfouz, then wearing the disguise of a strategically placed Houston real estate magnate, for two hundred million dollars.

Like father, like son? The father of Harken's chairman, Alan Quasha, was Manila-based attorney William Quasha, who advised executives of the defunct, scandal-ridden Nugan Hand Bank in Australia, which employed a number of former high ranking CIA and Pentagon officials. According to a 1983 Australian government report and the Wall Street Journal, Nugan Hand Bank was involved in money laundering for international heroin syndicates and secretly aided U.S. covert activities, at the same time that the former U.S. CIA director, William Colby, was also its attorney.

Some of the persons interacting with Nugan Hand executives in the 1970s were later to become central figures in the Iran-Contra affair, such as Major General Richard Secord, convicted Middle-East adviser to Reagan's Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, who was himself pardoned by former President Bush.

Iran-Contra figure Weinberger is now chairman of the closely held publishing company, Forbes Inc., and has twice in recent years sent executives and staff to the bin Laden family headquarters “to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors”.

Other Iran-Contra conspirators that have resurfaced, now hold or have held several top positions within the current Bush administration. Consider just two of such persons. Take the current Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was deeply involved with Iran arms sales with Oliver North and left his post as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan-Bush administration over a cascading series of scandals. Questions linger regarding his involvement in the illegal provision of war materials to both Iran and to Libya, through convicted rogue CIA operatives that included General Secord.

Armitage received Pakistan’s highest award available to a civilian by virtue of his assistance to the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in part, by supplying the fighters with shoulder-launched Stinger missles, that have not yet been recovered by the U.S.. Currently, Carlyle’s Frank Carlucci and the re-emerged Richard Armitage, are board members of the influencial Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council.

Another Iran-Contra conspirator is Elliot Abrams, the current National Security Council special assistant for democracy, human rights and international operations. As the Assistant Secretary of State during the Reagan-Bush administration, Abrams was charged with contempt of Congress by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh after evading questions about Oliver North’s secret mission to extract 10 million dollars from the Sultan of Brunei and about the Contra supply plane shot down.

Abrams gave the Sultan of Brunei the number of the bank account owned by InterMaritime Bank president, Bruce Rappaport, a golfing friend of then CIA director, William Casey. General Secord was the subsequent recipient of the $10 million cash, which was used for distribution to the Contras. Elliot Abrams, the current National Security Advisor, earlier had pleaded guilty for withholding information from Congress and was pardoned by the former President Bush in 1992.

It was soon after October 1984 that CIA director Casey paired North and Secord as a Contra-support team when the Congressional Boland Amendment forced the CIA to refrain from direct or indirect aid in matters of the covert making of wars.

Bush’s Bahrain Oil Deal: "I Beseach Thee, Oh Godfather"

The younger Bush's insider trading allegations relating to Harken lead a trail to the reportedly lucrative and exclusive offshore oil drilling contract that Harken received from the government of Bahrain in 1990, despite having had no previous international or off-shore drilling experience.

Bush sold his shares in Harken in 1991, immediately after the wells were found to be dry and just before the first Persian Gulf War, using his artificially inflated profits from the stock sale to buy into the Texas Rangers baseball team, making him personally wealthy enough to sell out before going into politics. George W. Bush's Bahrain deal was arranged by Houston oil consultant, Michael Ameen.

At that time, Ameen was a paid consultant for the U.S. State Department and had briefed the incoming U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, Charles Hostler. Simultaneously, Ameen was also the head of government relations for the Saudi's Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) that had Mahfouz on its Supreme Council. In that position, Ameen spent years dealing with members of the Saudi royal family and their associates, including his close friend Sheikh Kamal Adham, the long-term and influencial director of Saudi Intelligence from 1963 until 1979, overlapping former President Bush's tenure as CIA director. Sheikh Adham was formally involved in the Bahrain deal.

As an example of well-connected men, for over 25 years, the U.S. State Department’s deal maker, Michael Ameen, has known Harken-investor Sheikh Bakhsh, who at various times was also a principle shareholder in Stephens’ Worthen Bank, in BCCI and in Mahfouz’s Middle East Capital Group. As an example of a close and tight network, by Michael Ameen’s own account, within 10 minutes of discussing the matter of his recommendation of Harken for Bahrain's offshore deal with their Oil Minister, he received a call from one of Harken's investment bankers at Stephens Inc. of Little Rock. Before long, Ameen was leading Harken delegations to Bahrain, earning $100,000 for his services.

Earlier, during the 1980’s, Sheikh Adham and his successor as Saudi Intelligence Director, Abdul Khalil, secretly acted as BCCI nominees in a hostile take-over of Washington D.C.’s largest bank, Financial General Bankshares, that soon became First American Bankshares. First American was, in fact, a Bank of Credit and Commerce International front for Mahfouz that was set up in the U.S. with the pivotal assistance of billionaire Jackson Stephens, a lavish financial backer of many political campaigns for both Bush presidents.

Another principle shareholder of 25 million dollars in First American was arms merchant, Mohammed Hammoud, a long-time friend and business associate of Bahrain's Ambassador Hostler. And according to the Kerry Committee report, five Iran-Contra related wire transfers were made out of North/Secord accounts at First American in the amount of $346,000.00.

Previously, the CIA's station chief in Saudi Arabia, Raymond Close, who had illegally and covertly transferred weapons from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan in the 1970s, went to work for Sheikh Kamal Adham, a BCCI director, upon leaving the agency. A principle way in which BCCI was used as a money laundering service by drug traffickers and arms dealers was through its commodities affiliate, Capcom, that had both Stephens’ associates at First American, Sheikhs Adham and Khalil, as directors and majority shareholders.

A central figure in the 1990 off-shore drilling contract with George W. Bush’s company, Harken, was the Prime Minister of Bahrain, Sheikh Khalifah, who was also a major investor in BCCI Holdings. Prime Minister Khalifa and his brother, the Emir, both signed off on Harken's Bahrain oil deal, along with Sheikh Adham, who was termed the “Godfather of Saudi Intelligence” in the Kerry Report.

With much whitewash, in August 1991, Ed Rogers, political director in the administration of George Bush Sr., suddenly left his White House position to start a "consulting firm" and within a few weeks Rogers received a $600,000.00 contract with Kamal Adham.

Legally representing George W. Bush in the 1991 SEC probe of insider trading allegations related to his selling off his Harken stock was Dallas attorney Robert W. Jordan, the present U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Until recently, Jordan worked for Baker and Botts, whose principle attorney, former Secretary of State, James Baker III, is now strategically-placed in Bush Sr.’s Carlyle Group.

Extending the fabric of Executive nondisclosure and nepotism, the presiding SEC Chairman at that time, Richard Breenen, was a Baker and Botts senior partner and a political nominee of former President Bush. Plus, the litigating SEC General Counsel in the Harken insider probe, James Doty is another Baker and Botts alumnus who later represented George W. Bush in matters related to the ownership of the Texas Rangers.

The Sheikh's Texas Oasis: Refueling Air Force One and Money Laundering

One of Kamel Adham's close contacts, Adnan Khashoggi, is among the richest men in the world, who is a life-long friend of the bin Laden family and was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. In 1985, Sheikh Mahfouz's Saudi National Commercial Bank loaned Khashoggi 35 million dollars to purchase weapons to illegally sell to Iran, at the behest of Oliver North. Kashoggi's father was the physician to the bin Laden patriarch, Mohammed, and he got his start in business by arranging a large truck import deal for Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother.

When Salem bin Laden died in Texas in 1988, Sheikh Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston, so close was their life-long relationship and also that of their fathers, who likewise, were friends and business partners. The family patriarchs of both the bin Laden and the bin Mahfouz clans emigrated into Saudi Arabia from the same ancestral valley in Yemen in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Thus it was, in 1976, that Salem bin Laden employed James R. Bath, a long-time friend of George W. Bush since their days together as flyers in the Texas Air National Guard, as his business representative in the U.S.. Then in 1979 and 1980, Bath, while still an agent for Salem bin Laden, invested 50,000 dollars in Bush's first oil company, Arbusto Ltd..

Until the early 1990s, Bush's friend, James Bath, was also involved in multiple business ventures in the Houston area with Sheikh Mahfouz, BCCI's largest shareholder, including their company, Southwest Airport Services, refuelers of the presidential plane, Air Force One, when it came there.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Bath and Sheikh Mathouz, "The Saudi King's Banker", along with former Texas governor John Connally, owned the money-laundering Main Bank in Houston, which moved highly suspicious amounts of one hundred dollar bills and funded political campaigns during the late 1970s and 1980s.

During his Arbusto period, in 1979, James Bath purchased a Houston mansion for Mahfouz at 4.3 million dollars, with the payment made through none other than James Baker III’s law firm, Bakers and Botts. In 1990, during his Harken period, Bath obtained a 1.4 million dollar loan from Mahfouz. Bath was also the sole director for Mahfouz's Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd, which did a brisk business with Saudi Sheikhs and began in the Grand Cayman Islands in 1980 as a company briefly called Cotopax Investments.

It should be noted that several unusual business behaviors of Mahfouz’s Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd. demonstrated a pattern reminiscent of money laundering. First, within a month of its incorporation, the temporary board at Cotopax named Bush’s friend James Bath as company president, changed the company name to Skyways and then resigned en mass, leaving Bath as a sole director. Second, the Cayman Islands are an effective tax-shelter and haven for banking secrets. Third, one of the original subscribers to Cotopax, a company called Cayhaven Corporate Services, Ltd., was also a subscriber to “I.C., Inc.”. In reality, IC Inc. was the same entity as ICIC, which is the International Credit and Investment Corporation of Grand Caymans, termed BCCI’s “bank-within-a-bank” in the Kerry Committee report. Thus, James Bath’s Skyways Aircraft Leasing is an enterprise related to Mahfouz’s BCCI via “IC Inc.”.

Curiously, Mahfouz’s “IC Inc.”, the company related to George W. Bush’s friend James Bath, was found by investigators to be at the very center of a chart drawn by Oliver North, in North’s own White House safe, that showed the private banking network supporting the Iran-Contra operation.

Finally, in 1992, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, along with the FBI, reviewed the now forgotten accusations that George W. Bush's friend, James R. Bath, guided money to Houston from Saudi investors who wanted to influence U.S. policy under the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Therefore, neither George W. Bush's Harken, nor Arbusto, were really oil companies as such, but were rather intimate financial connections with powerful Saudi sheikhs and criminal bankers, people whose true intentions were to service the various covert operation schemes of the current President's father.

At the end of the day, when the lights go out, Osama bin Laden sleeps with Mahfouz's sister, so says the CIA.

The Axis of Speak No Evil

So, if you wonder why the Democrats didn't shout these revelations from the top of the Washington monument, consider the power of "hush money". When big Bush-backer Jackson Stephens' name kept popping up in the Senate's Kerry Committee report on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1992, his Worthen Bank of Little Rock, Arkansas made a timely, much needed, two million dollar loan to the primary campaign of our then future president, William Jefferson Clinton. Earlier, Hillary Clinton, representing the Rose Law Firm, successfully defended Systematics, a subsidiary of Stephens Inc, during Stephen's and Adham's hostile takeover of Finanial General Bankshares, that subsequently became First American Bankshares of D.C..

Recently, Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, has demanded that the heavily censored Saudi section of the Senate's 911 report, covered-up by President George W. Bush, be made public, so that the royal household could defend themselves from the accusations of their complicity in the events of 911.

Saudi royal complicity in supporting bin Laden is supposed by some to have been documented in that report, although the Prince claims that most of the support was inadvertent. As one of many examples of Saudi royal support, Prince Sultan, Prince Bandar's father and the Saudi minister of defense, has admitted to having contributed millions of dollars to the IIRO, while claiming to have been ignorant of their clandestine behavior.

However, if some significant measure of culpability for the September 11th attacks is shifted onto Sheikh Mahfouz, bin Laden's principle sponsor, and away from the Saudi royal family, the loser might actually be the current Bush administration. President Bush may be caught in a trap of his own making. Consider that George W. Bush never disclosed the true extent of his financial relationship to terror-sponsoring Saudi Sheikhs and CIA-dealing bankers.

In reality, George W. Bush had important business dealings with nine men that were deeply connected to Mahfouz, including seven men asssociated with Harken, namely: Dr. Hartmann, Sheikh's Bakhsh, Adham, Khalil and Khalifa, Bahrain deal-maker Michael Ameen and Jackson Stephens of Little Rock. Other individuals that are simultaneously connected to both Bush and Mahfouz are Sami Baarma of the Carlyle Group and James Bath of Arbusto.

Of the nine “business” persons connecting George W. Bush and Sheikh Mahfouz, three have been actively involved in financing covert U.S. military operations, they are Dr. Hartmann, Sheikh Adham, the “Godfather of Saudi Intelligence”, and his cohort, Sheikh Khalil.

It is clear that in a total of nine cases, Bush and bin Laden’s banker are connected by merely a single degree of separation. Consequently, one must ask if the purpose of Bush’s censorship of the Saudi section of the Senate’s 911 report is to obscure his business relationships to a number of high ranking individuals in Sheikh Mahfouz’s financial empire.

There were nine interrelationships listed above between George W. Bush and Sheikh Mahfouz, that have only a single degree of separation. There is another, interesting triangular relationship between Mahfouz and both Bush Presidents, and also between father and son. First, consider the ubiquitous Harken-financier, Dr. Hartmann, who was the corporate Vice President of the Mahfouz-connected InterMaritime Bank, under it’s President, Bruce Rappaport. In turn, Rappaport was the manager of multimillion dollar North/Secord accounts at the InterMaritime Bank and a friend of CIA director, William Casey, the architect of Iran-Contra subversion of the Boland Amendment.

By the same token, one might ask if Jackson Stephens, the long-term Bush family campaign benefactor, is possibly implicated in Sheikh Adham’s involvement with North/Secord accounts at First American, the BCCI front that these two billionaires setup together up in D.C.. The question is now begged. Does President George W. Bush’s former involvement with so many business cohorts of bin Laden’s banker, Sheikh Mahfouz, particularly men such as Dr. Hartmann and Sheikh Adham, reveal the outlines of a covert involvement in Iran-Contra by his father, George Bush Sr., when he was Vice President “under” Reagan?

The bottom line is that any BCCI connection to the Bush name spells serious political trouble for the current president. Moreover, three important questions must be asked regarding national security. First, did George W. Bush utilize international bankers and investors, for his seeming personal financial gain, who had previously been involved in the financing of covert wars by the CIA, in violation of the 1984 Congressional Boland Amendment. Second, did each Bush administration manipulate both the CIA and FBI in a manner intended to prevent the public revelation of these documented Bush-Saudi relationships? Third, how might manipulation of CIA and FBI “information output” on bin Laden’s archterrorist banker Mahfouz, by either Bush President, have resulted in negative effects on these agencies’ function?

After Mahfouz's second multi-billion dollar bank scandal broke in 1998, the international bank robber once again found himself profitably in bed with America, this time with the United States Navy. It was in the Port of Aden in October 12, 2000, three weeks before the 2000 Presidential election, that suicide bombers were able to maneuver a supply boat packed with explosives next to the USS Cole. The ensuing blast killed 17 sailors. U.S. authorities believe that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks.

It turns out that the Bin Mahfouz Group and the Port of Singapore Authority comprise an entity called Yeminvest, that is under contract with the Yemen government to run the facilities and operations of the Port of Aden, critically located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, in 1999, the Saudi Binladen Group was hired by Yemen officials to rebuild the nearby airport.

Recall that earlier, Mahfouz's company in Houston, Southwest Airport Services, operated by George W. Bush's friend, James Bath, refueled the Presidential plane, Air Force One.

After the Cole bombings, the man in charge of the FBI’s bin Laden investigation, John O’Neill, the deputy director of the agency’s New York office, was refused entry into Yemen by the U.S. Ambassador, Barbara Bodine. This occurred after Yemen authorities had disparaging referred to O’Neill and his team as “Rambos”. O’Neill had already lead investigations into Osama bin Laden’s series of bombings at the World Trade Center in 1993, at the U.S. military base in Saudia Arabia in 1996 and at the U.S embassies in Africa in 1998.

Following the Rambo incident, O’Neill’s attempts to properly investigate within Yemen were also thwarted by his FBI higher-ups and by the recently installed U.S. State Department under George W. Bush. O’Neill complained bitterly and resigned his FBI post in August 2001. Earlier, after the 1996 bombings that killed 19 American soldiers in Saudi Arabia and a foreshadowing of the hindered Yemen investigation, O’Neill was not allowed by King Fahd to interrogate the Al Qaeda-connected suspects, who were executed first.

Immediately after his FBI resignation, O’Neill became the head of security at the World Trade Center and then tragically met his fate in the attacks of September 11th. Some of John O’Neill’s final words were: “All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.”

The weight of evidence linking President Bush and bin Laden’s banker indicate that his censorship of the Senate 911 report was a willful nondisclosure of these connections and could come to represent a “high crime and misdemeanor”, that is, an impeachable offense.

The resume of America’s CEO President, George W. Bush, is clearly a subject that is worthy for a Congressional investigation, yet it reads like a lurid and twisted spy novel; with guns, drugs, money laundering, politics, “nukuler” proliferation and sex. I imagine some future tabloid headine: “Archterrrorist bin Laden is Sleeping with the Sister of Bush’s Business Partner.