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.
PHOTO: AP PHOTO
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 said 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 US$3 billion to US$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 Freeman, Jr., a former US 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 US$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 US$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 US after the Sept. 11 attacks because some feared reprisals by Americans.
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