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| Bin Laden family sells London offices Sunday Times of London 12/08/02: Jonathan Calvert Original Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-506286,00.html (Registration required) THE SECRETIVE family of the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, is selling off parts of its property empire in central London. The massive Saudi Binladin Group — a construction business run by Bin Laden’s billionaire brothers — is selling one of its lavish Mayfair office blocks for £9m. Its British subsidiary has already sold two buildings in London’s theatreland for a total of £8m in recent months. The properties are thought to be part of a large portfolio bought by the company as investments. The Saudi Binladin Group is the original source of the terrorist leader’s power and wealth. The company was founded in 1931 by his father Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant and playboy who died in an aircraft crash in 1968. The group, which has branched out into publishing, transport, banking, property and even public relations, is allowed to keep its accounts secret under Saudi law. But experts have placed its value at £25 billion and estimated that it has 5,000 employees around the world. It has strong links with Britain, where its main operating company, SBG Financial Engineers, is based near Islington, north London. Bin Laden’s brother Saleh Mohammed, 46, who gives his address as a post box number in Jeddah, is a director of SBG. A second relative, Shafig Mohammed Bin Laden, 44, is a director of a related British company called Symphony Advisers. The Bin Ladens also run publishing and freight companies in the UK. The family has secured the services of the Queen’s solicitors, Farrer and Co, to advise on the sale of the properties. It has already sold a six-storey block opposite the Cambridge Theatre, the home of Les Misérables, and a second building behind the National Portrait Gallery on a pedestrian street leading to Leicester Square. It is now attempting to offload 19 Berkeley Street, a grand six-storey building that is flanked by a gallery and a Jaguar showroom on a road linking Mayfair’s famous Berkeley Square with the Ritz. The property is being marketed by Gross Fine, a commercial estate agent. When the Sunday Times contacted Gross Fine last week calls were referred on to Farrer and Co, which declined to comment on the transactions. Before September 11, when Bin Laden’s terrorists struck in New York and Washington, the Saudi Binladen Group had been bidding to purchase an £80m tower block near London’s financial centre. However, it pulled out of the deal soon after the US attacks, saying that it did not feel the purchase would be “appropriate”. Bin Laden has 50 siblings, who are said to have disowned him before his Al-Qaeda terror network carried out the American attacks. They lost contact with him after he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. It was then that his interest in the family firm was bought out with a one-off payment of £24m. Dr Abdullah Mohammed Bin Laden, one of Osama’s younger brothers, told a British newspaper during a business trip to the UK a year ago that the family had attempted to bring the terrorist back into the fold. “In the early 1990s the family repeatedly reached out and tried to plead with Osama to moderate his views. On a more personal level, he was asked to respect the family,” said Abdullah. The Bin Laden family then unanimously agreed to disown him. Abdullah said his brother’s actions had brought dishonour on the family. “We are a merchant family. We do not get involved in politics,” he said. Nonetheless, the New York lawyers Kreindler and Kreindler are suing the company on behalf of more than 600 September 11 victims, claiming that some of the brothers helped Bin Laden. A complaint filed in the US courts claims: “While publicly denying a relationship with Osama, a number of the Bin Laden brothers and brothers-in-law personally and privately support his cause and contribute to jihad.” Neither of the family’s British registered directors is named in the suit and there is no suggestion that any of its British companies have ever been connected to terrorism. The Saudi Binladin Group is one of several Saudi and Islamic businesses and cultural organisations being sued in what is being billed as a “trillion dollar” action. The company also has substantial interests in America, where 22 members of the Bin Laden family were living at the time of the twin towers attacks. Earlier this year the Carlyle Group, a powerful Washington investment firm with links to George Bush Sr, sparked a controversy when it emerged that it managed more than £1.5m on behalf of the Bin Laden family. The Carlyle Group bought out the company’s holding after September 11. Last month Carlyle took a 34% stake in QinetiQ, a private company spun off from Britain’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency to work on military tests. ------------------------------- PRISON PLANET.com |