Bin Laden's Family Embraced Capitalism

Oct. 1 -- While the world may be focusing on one bin Laden, there are dozens of others, who together comprise the second richest family in Saudi Arabia and one of the most important families in that nation's banking business.

Even Osama bin Laden has trouble remembering all of his 51 siblings. When asked once by a reporter to list their names, he could barely recall a dozen before giving up amid his own laughter.

But members of the bin Laden clan living in the United States weren't laughing in the days following the attacks. They were fearing for their lives — and fleeing the country.

Thousands of miles away from the mountains of Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden may be in hiding, some of his many siblings reel at the attack he delivered to the bin Laden name.

Osama's father was an illiterate laborer who turned a construction business into a worldwide conglomerate. Now, the family members are "kind of like the Rockefellers or the Forbeses of Saudi Arabia," explains ABCNEWS consultant Jonathan Winer.

Capitalists and Philanthropists

If a consumer buys a Snapple, VolksWagen or an Audi in the Middle East, they've bought it from the bin Ladens, who have the exclusive franchise on the brands. The bin Laden family business employs 32,000 people in 30 countries, has a revenue of $5 billion a year and is invested everywhere from construction to manufacturing to financial services to insurance to biological research.

And some of the bin Ladens carry out their business ventures in the United States, based primarily on the East Coast, from as far south as Florida to as far north as Boston, and with offices in Rockville, Md., in between.

The Boston bin Ladens, for instance, own several units in a luxury condo and 16 percent of Hybridon, a Boston, Mass.,-based biotech company engaged in cancer research — and technology that someday could be used to defend against biological attacks.

And while their brother was allegedly sponsoring the first Trade Center bombing in 1993, the other bin Ladens were donating millions to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., for Muslim scholarships and art.