Al Qaeda Money Trail Runs From Saudi Arabia to Spain
By TIM GOLDEN and JUDITH MILLER
panish and American investigators believe that hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from Saudi Arabia into the accounts of Spanish companies that were used as conduits for money to Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups, law enforcement and intelligence officials said.
Officials in Spain and the United States said in interviews this week that they knew little about who in Saudi Arabia might have provided the funds sent to Spain, and they left open the possibility that the money could have come from investors who believed they were contributing to legitimate businesses.
But American officials have been frustrated in efforts to get further information about the transactions from the government of Saudi Arabia, officials involved in the investigation said.
Saudi Arabia's connection to the Sept. 11 attacks has been a subject of intense investigation since it was learned last year that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. The Saudi government has long distanced itself from Osama bin Laden, the son of a Yemen-born Saudi construction magnate, but United States officials are concerned about wealthy Saudis who have contributed millions of dollars to radical Islamist causes.
Whether some of this money found its way into the coffers of Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's terrorist organization, or even into the accounts of the hijackers who flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, remains unknown.
Spanish officials said part of the answer might be found in the operations of a Saudi trading and investment company that sent nearly $700,000 to Spain between 1996 and 2001. The company was run by Mohamed Zouaydi, who was charged earlier this year in Spain with raising money for a Qaeda cell there that operated throughout Europe and the Middle East.
"There was certainly money that came from Saudi Arabia," a Spanish intelligence official said. "There was money that was declared openly, and there was money that was on `black' accounts. Exactly who it came from, we do not yet know."
In New York, lawyers for a group of relatives of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks maintained that Saudi money, laundered through Spain, was used to help finance the attacks.
Spanish and American officials said they could not yet draw such a link. But Spanish police investigators said they had found accounting records showing that financiers of the Spanish cell sent at least $16,780 to two Syrian-born businessmen who have been accused of having close ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers in Hamburg, Germany.
The Spanish judge leading the investigation, Baltasar Garzón, described one of those men, Mahmoun Darkazanli, as "belonging to the most intimate circle of Mohamed Atta," who is believed to have been the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The German authorities, however, have thus far resisted American pressure to arrest Mr. Darkazanli.
Like the two businessmen in Germany, the men accused of heading the Spanish cell were natives of Aleppo, Syria. Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas is thought to have acted as its leader, and Muhamed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi as its chief financial operator.
Mr. Zouaydi, 41, arrived in Madrid in 1998 from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where he had operated a trading and investment company called Mushayt for Trading Establishment. In Spain, he helped form several other companies, including a small housing and construction business.
To be his partner in this venture in Madrid, Mr. Zouaydi recruited yet another Syrian immigrant, Ghasoub al-Abrash Galyoun, whom he had befriended years earlier when both men were members of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.
Spanish officials said Mr. Zouaydi's companies had two purposes: to launder monies sent to the Spanish cell from abroad, and to generate new funds. These were used to send recruits to fight as mujahedeen in places like Chechnya and Bosnia and to support Islamic radicals around the world.
Accordingly, Spanish court documents indicate, Mr. Zouaydi and Mr. Galyoun kept two sets of books. One was used for official purposes like their tax returns. Another kept track of unofficial expenditures, including donations made to radicals and terrorists.
"There was a double accounting system," one Spanish investigator said, "and there was money that came from abroad and was mixed between the real business projects and the donations for jihad."
A lawyer for Mr. Zouaydi in Madrid, María Ángeles Ruiz Martínez, said her client had only been a part owner of Mushayt for Trading Establishment, and she denied the Spanish authorities' assertion that he laundered money to support activities and agents of Al Qaeda.
"Over six or seven years, he made donations on behalf of his entire family," she said, adding that Mr. Zouaydi and his relatives had given about $118,000 to poor relatives, needy Syrians and a Muslim charity, the Global Relief Foundation.
The foundation, based in Bridgeview, Ill., provides medical help and other relief aid. But United States officials have long suspected it of having ties to terrorism, and the Treasury Department blocked its assets last December. Spanish officials said Mr. Zouaydi gave more than $225,000 to the foundation's representative in Belgium.
Spanish investigators believe that Mr. Zouaydi began moving money into Spain even before he left Saudi Arabia. Thereafter, officials said, money went into the Spanish companies by wire transfers from abroad, suitcases loaded with cash, loans from Spanish banks and contributions from unidentified investors.
By the time the Zouaydi companies were shut down by the Spanish police last November, they had built a surplus of more than $2 million, of which about $650,000 was distributed as what it called donations.
Among those contributions, Spanish officials said, about $105,000 was sent to Mohamed Bahaiah, whom Spanish and American investigators have described as an important courier for Mr. bin Laden between Europe and Afghanistan.
Spanish officials said Mr. Bahaiah, who is also Mr. Zouaydi's brother-in-law, went to Spain in late 1997, possibly to pick up a series of surveillance videotapes of the World Trade Center and other Qaeda targets that had been recorded several months earlier by Mr. Galyoun, Mr. Zouaydi's business partner.
Lawyers for the Sept. 11 victims' relatives have sought to link the attacks to Saudi Arabia in their suit. In presenting an amended complaint today, they quoted unnamed Saudi sources as having told them that Mr. Zouaydi once worked as an accountant for two members of the Saudi royal family, an assertion his lawyer denied.
Private investigators hired by the lawyers said they had received considerable help from the Spanish authorities. But Ronald Motley, the lead lawyer, went well beyond Spanish officials in arguing that members of the Saudi royal family, using Mr. Zouaydi as "what the Mafia would call a bag man," had sent money that ended up in the hands of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Nail al-Jubeir, said he had no information about any American request for background on Mr. Zouaydi or his Saudi businesses. But he said his government had helped in tracking terrorist finances.