SwissLeaks: Al-Qaeda financers among HSBC clients
(ANSAmed) - PARIS - Several of Al-Qaeda's major financers, known collectively as the 'Golden Chain', have been found to be among those holding bank accounts at the Swiss HSBC, reported Le Monde on Tuesday.
The daily cited documents shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among the men is a Saudi prince known in the past to have provided protection to Osama Bin Laden and another man from the Saudi royal family whose wife had sent payments to one of the alleged 9/11 attackers. Le Monde reports that other account holders included the former treasurer of an organization accused of money laundering for Al-Qaeda and the owner of a factory bombed by the US on suspicion of producing prohibited chemical weapons for sale on the black market. The list of names from the Golden Chain, the newspaper states, was found in Sarajevo in 2002 in a raid on a foundation that was actually a front for the financing of Islamic terrorism. Some of the names later appeared in the media while US secret services investigated the complex financing network for Al-Qaeda and its 'sheikh'.
HSBC, however, did not modify in any way its relations with the people included on the list and continued to manage accounts in their names.
According to a 2012 US Senate report, bank executives and its service tasked with monitoring the money paid into the clients' accounts knew that the individuals had been charged with having links with the terrorist group. (ANSAmed).
