| http://socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Epdscott/q4b.html More on the BCCI-bin Mahfouz-bin Laden Intelligence Nexus It is clearer than ever before that the nexus of connections made by BCCI in Washington -- to US banks, law firms, politicians, and the CIA -- as well as of connections to top Saudi intelligence officials and members of the Saudi royal family, was preserved after the closure of BCCI in 1991, and was utilized later to fund Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. A key figure in the survival was the Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, from a prominent family with background and connections similar to the bin Ladens. After indictment in the US, Khalid bin Mahfouz paid $225 million, including a $37 million fine, to escape possible charges in connection with the disappearance of BCCI's assets. In 1999 the Saudi Government bought out his stake in the huge Saudi National Commercial Bank, then forced his dismissal. After a financial audit of the bank's $21-billion assets, bin Mahfouz was placed under house arrest in a hospital. Some $2 billion of the bank's funds were suspected of being missing. French sources have located Khalid bin Mahfouz and his family at the center of a nexus involving other firms owned by his family, the bin Laden family and members of the Saudi royal family. Some of these were oil companies, like the Saudi companies Delta Oil and Nimir Oil. Both are partners with UNOCAL in Azerbaijan, and Delta was a partner in UNOCAL's efforts in 1996 to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. Bin Mahfouz himself was named to the governing council of the Saudi oil giant Aramco by King Fahd in 1989 (Brisard 187). The bin Mahfouz family also emerged as major donors and/or trustees of foundations, such as the Muwafaq or Blessed Relief Foundation and the International Development Foundation, which the US now says were used to transfer funds to Osama bin Laden. Many details of this BCCI-bin Mahfouz-bin Laden nexus have since been corroborated by the British, Canadian, and US press. Some of these articles are reproduced here and are well worth reading. However I have as yet seen no references in the US press to two aspects of the nexus that throw even more light on its scope and power. I. The personal indebtedness to Khalid bin Mahfouz's millions of the family of James Baker, close personal confidant and Treasury Secretary to the first President Bush, and later an officer with him of the Carlyle Group, in which the bin Laden family also invested. In 1985 bin Mahfouz was one of the Saudi financiers who purchased the Bank Tower in Houston of the Baker family Texas Commerce Bank, for $200 million. This was $60 million more than it had cost to build the Bank Tower four years earlier; and the sale was made "in the depth of Texas' real estate crash... at a time when it was difficult to give away office space in Houston" (Beaty and Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank, 355). II. The involvement of both a bin Laden family affiliate, the Saudi Investment Company (SICO), and of the bin Mahfouz family National Commercial Bank, with the Bank of New York - Inter Maritime Bank of Geneva, owned and managed by Bruce Rappaport. The Kerry-Brown Report gave details of the involvement in the 1980s of Rappaport, and of his bank's Vice President, Alfred Hartmann, with BCCI, with former CIA Director William Casey, and with the National Bank of Oman which forwarded Arab money to the Afghan mujahedin (Beaty and Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank, 311-12; Kerry-Brown Report, 318-20; cf. 69). The bin Laden family have tried to depict Osama as a renegade, and more recently the bin Mahfouz family have tried to say the same of Khalid. The details of this nexus make both claims highly unlikely. It would appear that the main reason we do not get the whole truth about this nexus is the involvement of Saudi, British, and US intelligence, not just before 1991, but today. |
