Sunday, November 17, 2002
orlandosentinel.com
Family heaps praise on jailed patriarch
By Pedro Ruz Gutierrez and Doris Bloodsworth | Sentinel Staff Writers
Posted November 17, 2002
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At Jesse Maali's palatial home in the exclusive gated community of Isleworth, the only person missing from the Islamic Ramadan dinner at sundown Saturday was the family patriarch.
"It's a big shock," said Jihad Maali, Jesse Maali's wife of 34 years. "We are still numb. It's been very painful."
This weekend, Maali, 57, sits in a Seminole County Jail cell awaiting a Monday court hearing in which federal prosecutors have promised to lay out his alleged ties to Middle Eastern violence.
Meanwhile, the estimated 120 members of his extended family in Central Florida anxiously yearn for the ordeal to end. They say it is a dark and totally unexpected turn in a life that has stretched from a one-story limestone home in north Jerusalem to a marble-floored, 10,500-square-foot mansion down the street from such luminaries as Tiger Woods, Shaquille O'Neal and Wesley Snipes.
" 'Nightmare' doesn't begin to describe it," said Saad Maali, 30, one of Maali's five children who gathered with about 60 other relatives to talk to reporters. "It's hell on earth."
Maali and his business partner, Mohammed Saleem Khanani, 52, were arrested Thursday on money-laundering and immigration-violation charges by federal, local and state agents. They are being held without bail until their hearings in federal court.
But the charges that Maali committed white-collar crimes are only a small part of what has the local Arab-American community in an uproar. They are outraged mostly by a prosecutor's argument in court Thursday that he should be kept in jail because he has "financial ties to Middle Eastern organizations who advocate violence."
Maali, a self-made millionaire, was born in 1945 in the Palestinian territories and left for Venezuela with his parents and siblings in 1961. Maali's father, Musa, wanted to take his family away from the region's turmoil -- and chose Caracas as a new home because it had a budding population of displaced Palestinians.
The teenage Jesse got his start in business selling household goods door-to-door with his father. Later, the father and son ventured into the grocery-store business.
In 1972, four years after marrying, Maali moved to New York City and settled in the Bronx to "pursue the American dream," according to his wife. Maali ran five successful grocery stores and supermarkets until the family moved to Florida, his wife said.
She said the family moved to Florida in 1986 because Maali didn't like the New York City traffic and wanted to get the children away from the violence, such as the muggings and robberies there. They had been to Orlando on vacations and thought it would be a good place to raise their five children.
"We liked it here," Jihad Maali, 53, said. "I was nervous in the beginning because we had to start over."
But Maali got into the business of selling T-shirts, gifts and trinkets to tourists -- opening a Ponderosa Steakhouse in the mid-1980s and the first of many Big Bargain World stores in 1989. Soon he had built it into a business empire now worth tens of millions.
Maali made his fortune through a dozen corporations in real estate, restaurants and gift and sporting-goods stores along International Drive and other tourist corridors.
In a March 1994 Sentinel article, Maali and Khanani were described as the "reigning kings of Central Florida's Bargain World empire" who were launching Sports Dominator, a sporting-goods chain aimed at foreigners visiting the tourist area.
Maali also was the owner in February 1989 of a Lake Buena Vista gift shop, Sunrise Gift Center, that caught fire and ended with the deaths of two Orange County firefighters. They died because an emergency exit was padlocked.
The family moved from the Bay Hill area into the Isleworth estate in 1998. The home is featured on the cover of the current issue of Orlando Home Design magazine, with an inside spread headlined "Opulence Unfolds."
On Thursday, federal agents burst into the elegant setting and herded the family into a room lighted by a crystal chandelier.
Family inspiration
Maali is revered by those who know him best.
Abraham Maali, 12, a Windermere Preparatory School fifth-grader, said he has learned more than a few history lessons from his grandfather.
"He's a great man," said the younger Maali. "He inspired me to start my own charity."
Family members described Maali as a quiet-spoken, sensitive man who would stay up all night in his office writing poetry. Although he was a good student, family members said he dropped out of school at 16.
Relatives said that no matter how angry people around him get, Maali is known for staying calm, often playing the role of mediator.
"He never raised his voice," Abraham Maali said.
Maali has a passion for the American Civil War and history in general. He took family members on trips throughout the United States and stopped at famous battlefields. They once visited the Alamo in Texas.
He likes to play golf three times a week and jog through his neighborhood.
On visits to Jordan and the Palestinian territories, Maali has been known to hand out cash to beggars and street vendors.
"If he sees somebody on the streets and he sees they are hungry, he would bring them food from his own plate," brother A.J. Maali said.
Bassel Maali, 33, a lawyer and son of the I-Drive entrepreneur and developer, said he thinks there are hidden motives behind the government investigation of his father.
"I think it's baseless. My dad is a respected business leader in this community. My family has been in this country over 100 years. We're all U.S. citizens," he said. "He struggled. It's the American dream. He came dirt-poor, and he became one of the wealthiest men in Central Florida. It's from rags to riches. He's a hard worker. He goes by the book and is very respectable."
Maali, who until now had no criminal history, will try to clear his name after Monday's court hearing, his sons and lawyer said.
Maali also is well-known in Orange County and Orlando political circles and often donated to local political races.
Sheriff Kevin Beary said he met Maali in 1996 through an introduction by former Orange County Commissioner Bob Freeman.
"He brought Jesse Maali to my office; we did a background check. He did a lot of charitable events, so we made him an honorary deputy," Beary said.
The sheriff said he found out three years later that Maali was the target of an investigation. He said he talked to federal authorities, and it was decided Beary would not revoke Maali's honorary badge.
"We decided not to take it back because it would tip him off," Beary said. At a meeting with the Arab-American and Muslim communities last year, Maali distributed cards and gifts from the Middle East to Beary and other authorities.
At that Oct. 13, 2001, town meeting, Arab-Americans and local and federal law-enforcement officials addressed discrimination, hate crimes and public backlash relating to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Maali was one of 200 Arabs, Muslims and other Middle Easterners who listened to Beary speak along with state and federal law-enforcement officials.
"There was an understanding between us and the law-enforcement community," Maali told a Sentinel reporter after the meeting. "It was an opportunity to address our civil rights and our concerns."
Mark NeJame, Maali's attorney, dismissed any suggestion that his client might be tied to terrorism or Middle Eastern groups that "advocate violence."
"He's not going to commit economic suicide by supporting something that will decimate the tourism industry," NeJame said outside Maali's mansion. "It's insane. It would be foolhardy. He's a capitalist through and through."
A trying month
Jihad Maali had just returned from a trip to Jerusalem last week, the day before federal agents rang her doorbell and identified themselves through the home's intercom. She heard the word federal and mistook the men for something else.
"I thought it was Federal Express," she said.
It had already been a trying month, according to family members. There had been son Bassel's wedding Oct. 27, followed by the death of her sister. She had just returned the day before the raid and had been stressed by airport-security officers in Newark who had detained her and questioned why her husband wasn't with her.
Saad Maali said the Sept. 11 attacks had taken a financial toll on his father's businesses.
Since Thursday's raids, the names Maali and Khanani and their businesses have come under a cloud of suspicion.
Other relatives said the family now finds itself having to fend off stereotypes and prove its patriotism, although most Maalis are U.S. citizens. Relatives said Maali's uncle fought at Normandy in World War II.
Husam Maali, a nephew of the I-Drive magnate, said the accusations about his uncle employing illegal aliens were exaggerated.
"I feel it's a shame that someone who has put all his time and effort into his business and to take care of his family would be targeted like this," Husam Maali said.
The employment of undocumented workers is fairly common, the nephew said.
"It happens in all restaurants and business where the owner is not hands-on or where he doesn't run the day-to-day operations of the business."
Jim Leusner contributed to this report. Pedro Ruz Gutierrez can be reached at pruz@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5620. Doris Bloodsworth can be reached at dbloodsworth@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5446.
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