maybe he trades using his RIM blackberry<G>
TRACING THE NETWORK
Bin Laden delivered weapons, profits
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 9/27/2001
WASHINGTON - One of Osama bin Laden's companies in Sudan would export sugar to Afghanistan and return with a cargo that included US-made Stinger missiles.
Another firm appeared to deal with finance, but some of its employees were allegedly traveling the world as terrorists. A third company was in the fishing business, but allegedly used the profits to pay for the bombing of the US embassy in Kenya. Bin Laden also had a $50 million investment in a Sudanese bank.
The businesses are part of bin Laden's six-year sojurn in Sudan. It was there, in northern Africa, where bin Laden appears to have built much of the financial, fund-raising, and terrorist empire now under intensive investigation by US authorities.
Yesterday, a Senate committee heard testimony that bin Laden not only appears to retain a stake in the Sudanese bank, but also has a network of more than 100 businesses and self-described charities that stretches around the globe and has so far eluded the grasp of US law enforcement.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said bin Laden's investment in al-Shamal, a bank in Sudan, gave him access to banks around the world.
''Bin Laden could be using the Shamal bank to gain access to US banks,'' Levin said, calling for new laws that would prevent such access. Levin cited an instance in which $250,000 was wired from Shamal Bank to a bin Laden associate in Texas, who used the money to buy a plane for bin Laden.
Despite President Bush's order Monday to freeze assets of 27 entities linked to bin Laden, Levin said his staff has found that accounts at several banks linked to al-Shamal are still open to bin Laden.
The bank and the businesses in Sudan are part of a large empire. Bin Laden's funds come from a ''network of financial donors, international investments, legal businesses, criminal enterprises, smuggling mechanisms, Muslim charitable organizations, Islamic banks, and underground money transfer,'' William F. Weschler, a former National Security Council official who has tracked bin Laden's finances, said in testimony yesterday to the Senate banking committee.
Much of that network was developed during bin Laden's years in Sudan, from about 1990 to 1996. US officials said bin Laden controlled some of the largest commercial enterprises in Sudan, generating both profits and a cover for terrorist activities.
An examination by the Globe of thousands of pages of trial transcripts, State Department reports, and other material shows a clear trend: The terrorists and their operations may operate on a low budget, with bin Laden himself eschewing his Saudi mansions for an Afghan cave, but the overall enterprise is funded well enough that large expenses have been covered routinely.
Senator John F. Kerry, a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, estimated that bin Laden's assets probably still exceed $200 million. Moreover, some of bin Laden's cells, perhaps including the Sept. 11 hijackers, have raised money independently.
The depth of bin Laden's financial assets greatly concerns US officials, because evidence has been presented in a series of trials that bin Laden associates have tried to buy items for a possible nuclear device, as well as chemical weapons. In one case, a bin Laden associate tried to buy a cylinder of uranium for $1.5 million.
When President Clinton ordered a missile strike against a Sudanese factory in response to the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, White House officials said the factory was targeted because it was part of bin Laden's Sudanese financial empire and was suspected of producing chemical weapons. (The factory's owner has denied any connection to bin Laden or chemical weapons and has sued the United States.)
The source of bin Laden's initial wealth is clear. He inherited an estimated $300 million after his father died; he is the 17th son of 52 children born to numerous wives. Bin Laden reportedly used much of that money to help finance the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, particularly by buying heavy machinery.
Bin Laden was helped in that effort by the United States, which supplied Afghan resistance fighters with many resources, including sophisticated Stinger missiles and other weaponry. By some estimates, the United States covertly pumped $3 billion to $6 billion of weapons and other goods into the Afghan resistance.
Bin Laden also raised money through a self-described charity called al-Kifah, or the Struggle, which had perhaps 30 offices in the United States, including one with a Boston mailing address. The offices reportedly were financed by bin Laden and raised money and recruited Arab immigrants to fight in Afghanistan.
When the war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, bin Laden moved to Sudan to set up a string of businesses. Some of the Kifah centers in the United States then refocused on raising money for terrorism, US officials said.
Bin Laden chose Sudan as a base because the ruling party, the National Islamic Front, shared much of his ideology. Bin Laden presented himself as a businessman who would help develop Sudan, an impoverished country that recently has been in the news for the selling of slaves.
Bin Laden arrived in Sudan angry at the US presence in his former homeland of Saudi Arabia. He soon began to wage a campaign against US troops who went to Somalia in 1993 in a mission called Operation Restore Hope. Bin Laden's method was ''to establish fake businesses, cover businesses that help fighters infiltrate through to Somalia,'' Assistant US Attorney Paul Butler said in court this year.
The bin Laden businesses were coordinated in a suite of offices on Khartoum's McNimr Street, with his personal office on the first floor. Company travel was arranged through a committee that would supply fake passports and fake names, possibly from documents that had been stolen, according to testimony in the African bombing cases. Similar techniques may also have been used in the case of some of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
There were also committees on the military, Islamic study, and a media organization that published a newspaper, all overseen by Wadi al-Aqiq, the ''mother of all companies.''
During his years in Khartoum, bin Laden gave interviews to a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
''He had companies,'' Khashoggi, deputy editor of Arab News, said in a telephone interview from Saudi Arabia. ''He had shares in banks. He was building a major road. He began to settle down there as a businessman.
''The last time I talked to him [about five years ago], he talked more about economics than politics,'' he said.
His businesses were not just focused on the bottom line, US prosecutors say. In one transaction, a bin Laden company sent sugar from Sudan to Afghanistan. But on its return flight, the rented Sudan Airways cargo plane was loaded with Milan rockets and Stinger missiles, apparently including some of the weaponry the United States had sent to Afghan resistance fighters, according to US officials.
The role of Hijra Construction was vital. The company's main business was road-building, just as bin Laden's father built his fortune in Saudi Arabia. Hijra Construction built a road linking Khartoum with Port Sudan and a major airport. The company also bought explosives that were used in road construction.
But explosives also were used at a training camp at a farm in Sudan owned by another bin Laden company, Themar al Mubaraka, according to trial testimony.
Taba Investment, another bin Laden company, appeared to make a profit for bin Laden. Trial testimony showed that the company figured out how to make extra money by processing peanuts rather than shipping the raw crop to Europe. The State Department report says bin Laden ''secured a near monopoly over Sudan's major agricultural exports of gum, corn, sunflower, and sesame products.''
By 1996, under pressure from the United States, Sudan had forced bin Laden to leave. Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, believes that this may have required bin Laden to quickly liquidate his holdings, costing him millions of dollars. ''This is one of the reasons'' that bin Laden hates the United States, Khashoggi said. ''I believe he lost a good portion of his money in Sudan.''
US officials dismiss such suggestions, saying that bin Laden attacked US interests long before he left Sudan. Bin Laden himself said he wanted to strike Americans because of the US presence in Islamic countries. In any event, US officials said, upon returning to Afghanistan, bin Laden used some of his funds to help finance the Taliban, which now controls most of the country.
During the last five years in Afghanistan, bin Laden has received money both from the self-described charitable organizations and from the web of companies and investments he has scattered in dozens of countries. In addition, there have been reports that some of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest businessmen paid millions in ''protection money'' to prevent attacks on their businesses.
Some observers, including Khashoggi, have wondered whether it was a mistake for the United States to have forced bin Laden out of Sudan. Now, instead of knowing bin Laden's exact whereabouts in Khartoum, the United States is facing a difficult search in the desolate terrain of Afghanistan.
Michael Kranish can be reached by e-mail at kranish@globe.com.
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 9/27/2001. |
