-Caveat Lector-
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAE4DJAGSC.html
Bin Laden Conglomerate Can't Shake Osama's Shadow
News/Current Events News Source: AP Published: 10/5/01 Author: Susan
Sevareid Posted on 10/05/2001 11:21:18 PDT by JeanS
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) - Respected across the Middle East, the Saudi Bin
Laden Group renovated Islam's holiest sites, helped build the skyline in
Saudi Arabia's capital - and forged ties with the kingdom critical to its
business.
But since Sept. 11, the business connections so carefully nurtured by the
family have suddenly been threatened.
The family has disowned and repeatedly disavowed Osama bin Laden, the main
suspect behind the world's worst-ever terrorist assault. Yet some of the
Bin Laden Group's international bankers and business associates told The
Associated Press they are reconsidering or even cutting their ties.
Inside the Saudi Arabian kingdom are the first signs of uneasiness over the
royal family's decades-old relationship with the bin Ladens.
There is no evidence of financial links between Osama and the Bin Laden
conglomerate, and it is widely accepted in the kingdom that his company
ties are broken - a necessity to ensuring the royal favor needed to secure
prestigious contracts.
But some global businesses aren't taking any chances their images could be
damaged.
Cadbury Schweppes, the London-based beverage and candy maker, has severed
ties with a Saudi distributor owned by a Lebanese holding company in which
the bin Ladens have a minority stake.
Cadbury Schweppes said through a spokeswoman, Dora McCabe, that the Sept.
11 attacks prompted it to speed up an earlier decision to cut ties because
of slow sales. Asked why, she said: "I think it's understandable."
Michael Walker, chief executive of Multitone wireless networking of
Britain, suspended dealings with Baud Telecommunications, a Bin Laden Group
subsidiary, after the terrorist attacks.
"At times like this, businesses such as ours ... have a duty to act with
total integrity," Walker said, adding the company does "very little" of its
business in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Bin Laden Group did not respond to several requests for comment
made through telephone calls and a fax to a secretary in the company's
headquarters in Jiddah. About a dozen of Osama's 53 siblings work in the
conglomerate, which has $3 billion to $5 billion in annual revenue and
businesses including mining and telecommunications.
At Citigroup, which provides banking services to the Bin Laden Group,
spokeswoman Susan Weeks wouldn't elaborate on specific banking ties. But,
she said: "Given the events of the past two weeks, we will be monitoring
the situation closely."
The Dutch ABN Amro bank, which owns 40 percent of a Saudi bank that has
counted the Bin Laden Group among its clients for seven decades, says it
has no evidence of wrongdoing.
"If there is new information regarding a client which would lead us to
reevaluate the relationship or review the relationship then we will not
hesitate to do so," said ABN spokesman Jochem van de Laarschot.
Chas W. Freeman, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said he's
heard that companies that have "had very long and profitable relationships
are now running for public relations cover."
He attributed that to ignorance, noting the bin Laden remains "a very
honored name" in the kingdom.
Freeman, now board chairman of Projects International Inc., a Washington
company that helps arrange global business deals, says he's discussing
proposals with the Bin Laden Group - and that won't change.
Since its start in the 1930s by Osama bin Laden's father, Yemeni immigrant
Mohammed bin Laden, the Saudi Bin Laden Group has built airports, hotels,
palaces, power plants, roads and mosques.
It carried out massive renovations at Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites
in Islam, in the 1980s, and built the pyramid-shaped Faisaliah Center, a
Riyadh skyscraper that opened last year. It also restored Al Aqsa mosque in
Jerusalem, the third-holiest site, after a 1969 fire.
Osama bin Laden studied economics and worked in the company before making
jihad, or holy war, his career.
After he was caught smuggling weapons from Yemen in the early 1990s, Saudi
Arabia stripped him of his citizenship and froze his assets in the kingdom.
Estimates of his share of the inheritance from his father's 1968 death,
which was distributed 20 years later, begin at $50 million.
Though striving to extend its business globally, the bulk of the Bin Laden
Group's business is inside the kingdom. A lack of faith in the company at
home ultimately could prove more devastating than losing overseas business.
Turki al-Sudairy, editor in chief of the English-language Riyadh Daily,
which often reflects government views, took the unusual step of distancing
the monarchy from the bin Ladens.
In a recent column, he noted that the Bin Laden Group had fared extremely
well in the Mecca and Medina renovations.
"It was the Saudi government which planned and executed the expansion of
the Holy Mosques and offered (the Bin Ladens) those exaggerated contracts,"
the influential editor wrote. Industry analysts estimate the project's
total value to the Bin Laden Group at perhaps $10 billion.
It appeared the views expressed in al-Sudairy were his own. Even so, such
public grumbling is rare in the kingdom and could foretell shifting policy
winds.
Tim Metz, a New York-based spokesman for the Bin Laden family on matters
separate from the company, dismissed the notion the monarchy might want to
distance itself from the bin Ladens.
Metz noted the kingdom had evacuated 22 bin Ladens from the United States
after the Sept. 11 attacks because some feared reprisals by Americans.
"It's hard to believe they were in much disfavor," he said.
---
Editor's Note: Associated Press writer David McHugh in Frankfurt
contributed to this report.
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