Asia Times: How Osama bin Laden really builds his fortune


	September 20, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

How Osama bin Laden really builds his fortune
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Investigators across Europe, Japan and the United States are tracking unusual share price movements shortly before last week's terror attacks on America, suspecting that Osama bin Laden, with prior knowledge of events, was cashing in to help finance his terror network.

In particular, they are looking at the reinsurance, airline and armament sectors, surmising that bin Laden had injected as much as US$200 million into short-selling stocks which he knew would plummet on the news of the attacks he is said to have masterminded.

Investigators could be involved in a futile paper chase, however. Saudi Arabian bin Laden inherited an estimated $60 million when his father, Mohammad, died in 1968, money derived from the giant Saudi Binladen Group, which was then mainly involved in the construction business in Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden, an engineer by training, worked for the family concern for some time before falling out with the Saudi royal family over the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War in 1991, causing him to permanently leave the country.

He took with him his expertise in the construction business, and it is in fact in this field that he is thought to make the money necessary to maintain what is said to be a vast worldwide terrorist network, Al-Quaida, as well as providing funds for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where bin Laden lives.

Bin Laden is believed to operate through frontmen and underworld people in construction, including Palestinians in Palestine and the United Arab Emirates, and other associates in the United States and some countries in Europe.

And especially in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, a veritable concrete jungle where the lucrative construction industry is firmly in the hands of the underworld - and in many cases with the blessing of the powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which has close ties with the Taliban it helped install in Afghanistan.

The ISI, instead of constantly having to finance its contacts from its own secret funds (for the armed struggle in Kashmir, for instance), gives the contacts a free hand to operate in the construction business, where they can make easy money.

According to investigations, in an average commercial project in Karachi, if a businessman invests Rs 10 million ($1.5 million), after two years he can earn a return of as much as Rs 100 million. Often, plots that are earmarked for non-commercial purposes, such as mosques, parks, schools and hospitals and which are available at cheap rates, are illegally purchased and turned into commercial complexes, all with officialdom turning a blind eye under pressure from the ISI.

Indian ganglord Dawood Ibrahim, who has close links to the ISI, is the biggest name in real estate in Karachi, with an estimated more than 100 projects that are said to have generated Rs 10 billion.

But it is other players who are of particular interest. In investigations of the building industry in Karachi, some builders and middle-range contractors were found to be in no position financially to invest in major construction. But almost overnight they suddenly had huge funds at their disposal for high-rise projects.

And investigations show that of these, at least two prominent names are associated with the Taliban and bin Laden. One is the publisher of an Urdu daily newspaper in Karachi, in addition to being involved in construction. He was at one time a political advisor to a former prime minister of Afghanistan, Gulbadeen Hekmatyar. After the Taliban established their government in 1996 he gave them his support. He is said to be the only Pakistani to keep Afghan bodyguards. Police have several times raised objections to them carrying unlicensed weapons, but the intelligence agencies have intervened and nothing has happened.

A few months ago, the publisher and two other builders who are linked to a pro-Taliban religious-political party were named in a First Inquiry Report (FIR) over a land scandal lodged against them by a serving colonel. The colonel was commanding a special army monitoring team. Subsequently, their names were mysteriously dropped from the FIR report. The colonel personally told this correspondent that he was under pressure from his seniors to stop any action against the builders.

Soon after this incident, police apprehended a notorious underworld person, Shoaib Khan, who is also wanted by Interpol on charges of murder, heroin trafficking, operating gambling dens and illegal construction activities. It is on record that when police were conducting the raids the above-mentioned publisher ran stories showing Shoaib Khan as a noble businessman, a pious person who contributed money for the Afghan war - and the reports categorically stated that he was linked with bin Laden's Al-Quaida group.

According to sources, if further investigations are carried out in other countries, a similar nexus will be found between shady construction businessmen and bin Laden's associates and the Taliban.

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