Bin Laden's Family Embraced Capitalism

Oct. 1, 2001 -- 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.

The family also has some interesting political connections through the Carlyle Group, their financial advisers. The firm hired former Secretary of State James Baker and former President George Bush as consultants. Bush met with the family twice.

Last year, former President Carter met with 10 bin Ladens who donated $200,000 to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga.

Feud Over Ideals

So where did the paths diverge? How did one child from a family of global entrepreneurs come to be the enemy of the capitalist West?

The initial changes started when, as a college student, Osama became engrossed in fundamentalism. At the age of 22, he took up the Afghan fight against the Soviet Union.

The rupture with his family came in 1991 when Osama denounced the presence of America in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War while other bin Ladens were making millions building airstrips and military housing for U.S. troops.

Further, after a terrorist bomb attack in 1996 killed 19 soldiers and destroyed military housing, the family got a $150 million contract to rebuild what was destroyed.

Since then it has been a bin Laden civil war — brother against brother. Some have tried to live in peace in the United States, but felt forced to flee because of their brother's acts.

The Two bin Ladens

No matter how they try to distance themselves, or denounce Osama, the FBI is very interested in learning more about the family business and has subpoenaed all their records. A recent French Intelligence report reveals a web of bin Laden companies both good and bad.

Investigators are trying to make sure no family member is funneling money to the blackest sheep of all. "They say they don't support anything he is doing, that he is a pariah now in the family," says Winer.

But they have been quite secretive over the years like a number of families in the Middle East about how the financial network actually operates. He adds, "It is a very tangled web of relationships that needs to be sorted out."

What emerges from the intricate web is a picture of two bin Ladens: One, a 6-foot 4-inch, 44-year-old soft spoken terrorist who moves through the shadows of Afghanistan, using a body double to confuse his enemies, and sharing rat-infested caves with his three wives and 15 children.

The other, some of the most prominent supporters of the West in the Muslim world, living in luxury in Saudi Arabia.

And, perhaps in an ultimate irony, the family is now building a trade center in Beirut, Lebanon, with a design that looks all too familiar. "It looks like the World Trade Center — a single tower not two," describes Winer. "It could almost be the same building."