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Subject: Wealthy Saudis are al Qaeda's principal financial backers
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 19:39:17 -0400

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 18, 2002; Page A26


U.S. intelligence has identified about a dozen of al Qaeda's principal
financial backers, most of them wealthy Saudis, and a top financial
investigator is headed to Europe seeking a unified front to freeze their
assets in the hope of crippling the terror network, senior administration
officials said yesterday.

Jimmy Gurule, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for enforcement, said
he will begin a six-day visit to Europe on Sunday to present his
counterparts with "specific information on selective, high-impact targets"
so they can "be designated terrorist financiers and have their assets
blocked.

"We want to engage in a very specific level of information on these targets
where we want the European Union to take action," Gurule said. "It goes
beyond general statements and requests to specific people and entities we
want authorities to act against. . . . More important than the number is the
high impact these targets have."

Another senior official said the list targets people who have given tens of
millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization through the
years by routing the money through charities and legitimate businesses
around the world.

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the United States has frozen $112 million
in terrorist assets, designated 240 people and organizations as terrorist
supporters and moved against several large Islamic charities in the United
States.

But senior U.S. officials said that, until recently, they had not been able
to trace the money to its source. Now, they said, recent intelligence
gathered through interviews with captured al Qaeda operatives and other
methods has given them a clearer picture of where much of al Qaeda's money
originates.

The list, the official said, goes "to the check writers who give the money
to al Qaeda, not just the facilitators and those who move the money around.
We are finally getting to the source."

The official said most of the alleged financiers are wealthy Saudi bankers
and businessmen. Because the Saudi government has previously proven
uncooperative in confronting its prominent citizens about links to terror,
the United States has not yet sought its help in the new effort, officials
said.

Instead, the government hopes to freeze their assets in Europe, where the
Saudi financial and business empires have much of their money, and put
together the broadest possible consensus to demand that the Saudi government
crack down on the alleged terror financiers, they said.

Acting unilaterally, the United States can freeze only assets in this
country, where few of the businessmen have money or businesses.

The Saudi Embassy had no comment on the matter yesterday.

Gurule is scheduled to visit Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, all
banking centers with strict secrecy laws. He will also go to Denmark, which
currently holds the presidency of the 15-nation European Union, and Sweden,
which is a member of the multinational Financial Action Task Force.

In addition to meeting with government officials, Gurule said he would talk
to bankers and other private-sector groups to enlist their support in
cracking down on terrorist finances.

In the past, European officials have complained that the United States has
not been willing to share enough information to allow them to take action in
Europe, where the legal obstacles to designating a person a terrorist
financier are more formidable than in the United States.

"I believe it is always better to act cooperatively than unilaterally,"
Gurule said. "Cooperation has been very good, and we want to engage the
Europeans in an effort to make them more pro-active in this fight."

The designations are likely to exacerbate recent strains in the U.S.
relationship with Saudi Arabia, which provides the United States with vital
oil supplies and would be crucial to any U.S. military action against Iraq.

Yesterday, the influential New York-based Council on Foreign Relations
released a report contending that Saudi officials have for years "turned a
blind eye" to wealthy Saudi citizens' funding of terrorist activities.
Earlier this year, senior Pentagon officials received a briefing from a
consultant who said the Saudis were active in all levels of militant Islamic
terrorism.

U.S. and European intelligence officials said that although al Qaeda has
millions of dollars stashed away in gemstones, gold and other commodities,
in recent months there have been signs the organization is having difficulty
moving the assets to its operatives around the world.

As a result, the officials said, the terrorist organization has begun
relying on human couriers to fly into Saudi Arabia, pick up cash at mosques
or from representatives of the financiers, and fly it out again to deliver
it around the world. The trail of the couriers, the officials said, has
helped identify the current targets.

"In the next few weeks, you will hear cries of pain, mostly from Saudi
Arabia," the senior official said. "If the Saudis don't take action against
these people, we will at least make sure they cannot travel outside their
home country and cannot do business as usual around the world."


© 2002 The Washington Post Company