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| The Investigation |
| Bin Laden's ventures... |
| 2001-09-16 |
His business ventures have ranged from construction to trade in diamonds and fish. He has contributed to schools, road-building and malaria control. And he may be the mastermind and financier behind the largest act of terror in U.S. history. Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last week's attacks that killed thousands of people, destroyed the World Trade Center, and damaged the Pentagon, is an elusive character in many ways. And his finances, too, are shrouded in mystery. At the peak of his business dealings in the mid-1990s, this son of a Saudi construction magnate owned about 30 companies in Sudan, and had investments across the Islamic world and beyond, from Kenya and Uganda to Malaysia and the Philippines. Even after international sanctions against Sudan caused him heavy losses, bin Laden's fortune was still estimated at $250 million to $300 million, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland's University of St. Andrews. What has happened to his fortune since then is unclear. "After 1998, his investments have been extremely clandestine," Gunaratna said. "The big companies he had have all been dissolved or given over to others." After bin Laden was accused in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, the United States attempted to freeze his assets with little evidence of success. "He's put most of his money into cash or real estate through intermediaries, false-front organizations," said Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution who has studied bin Laden's role in Afghanistan. What seems more clear is that bin Laden's resources aren't limited to his own fortune but have been bolstered by a continuous stream of contributions. Yet he would need only a fraction of his supposed riches to carry out the kind of terrorism he is accused of. "We're used to thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars" to conduct a complex operation, Cohen said. "These guys are probably thinking in terms of a million or two." Gunaratna puts the figure even lower, for an attack such as Tuesday's that relied on simple weapons and highjacked airplanes. "To conduct a terrorist operation . . . doesn't require a lot of money. That kind of operation you can conduct with $200,000," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |