Khalid bin Mahfouz has also been associated with longtime Bush family friend and GOP political heavyweight James Baker III.
Mahfouz and Baker were reportedly two of the major investors behind the development of the Texas Commerce Tower, now known as the JP Morgan Chase Tower. When James Bath reportedly purchased a Houston mansion for Mahfouz, the payment was made through James Baker III’s law firm, Baker Botts.
Baker Botts is representing some of the Saudis in their case against the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Shortly after the collapse of BCCI in 1991, Khalid bin Mahfouz took over the Saudi-based National Commercial Bank (NCB), the largest bank in the Middle East. The NCB remains the subject of an ongoing legal dispute with victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The NCB was recently the target of a discovery motion filed in federal district court in Manhattan by the plaintiffs' lawyers. The motion singles out Khalid bin Mahfouz and another former NCB executive, Yassin al-Qadi, for their alleged involvement in raising funds for al-Qaeda.
Al-Qadi, like Mahfouz, has several ties to elite figures in Washington. He is known to have escorted U.S. officials during their visits to Saudi Arabia and he claims to have become friends with vice president Dick Cheney at a fundraiser organized by the Saudi-based Dallah Group.
The Saudi conglomerate, also known as the Dallah al-Baraka Group, was the first defendant named in the 9/11 families’ original lawsuit. The company is suspected of paying a ‘ghost’ salary to a Saudi spy that provided assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers.
There have been allegations Yassin al-Qadi was protected from terrorism investigations because of his renowned status.
In the late 1990s, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Task Force in Chicago was building a major criminal case against Yassin al-Qadi, but according to agents that worked the case, higher-ups at the FBI blocked the probe and shut it down for political reasons. This occurred after funds used to orchestrate the 1998 African embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania had reportedly been traced back to the Saudi suspect.
FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, who spearheaded the investigation in Chicago, attempted to blow the whistle on the FBI following the 9/11 attacks. After going public with his concerns, Wright was gagged by the Justice Department and prevented from releasing a manuscript detailing the FBI’s failures in the years leading up to 9/11.
According to Agent Wright, the government could have prevented 9/11 had suspected terrorists not been protected from prosecution by the FBI. Much of Wright’s investigation centered on Yassin al-Qadi and his alleged involvement with Saudi-funded charities and businesses suspected of laundering money to terrorists.
“There are very significant potential conflicts of interests in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations with the country primarily responsible for funding these charities, mainly Saudi Arabia,” a representative for Wright said at a 2002 press conference. “That may help explain why the federal government, why the FBI agents were nervous about getting into this stuff, when the rich and powerful of Washington, DC, are in fact doing business with some of these entities.”
At the time of the Chicago FBI probe, Yassin al-Qadi was the owner of a high-tech U.S. software firm with numerous government contracts. The Massachusetts-based company, Ptech, stirred controversy following the 9/11 attacks when several investors and employees were publicly linked to money laundering and terrorism financing.
Ptech maintained a security clearance with the military and held contracts with the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the FAA, the IRS, the White House and several other U.S. government agencies, including the FBI.
Many reports suggest the company was tied to the CIA.
The same financial nexus established by the CIA to fund the Afghan jihad during the 1980s includes several individuals and organizations with ties to Ptech. The network shifted its support to Bosnia in the early 1990s when the U.S. was providing covert support to militants in the same region.
