Bakr resolved the matter within months of Salem’s death by endorsing a major distribution under Islamic law. Representatives of the Bin Laden family later told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that heirs could choose whether to take cash or to reinvest in the family companies. For his part, Osama seems to have followed both paths. He took about $8 million in cash, according to what family representatives told the FBI. He also became a shareholder in the new partnerships that Bakr organized as he restructured the family businesses. One of these was the Mohamed Bin Laden Company, successor to the original family firm. The other was a new entity called the Saudi Bin Laden Group (SBG), chaired by Bakr and inaugurated in late 1989. These two companies were entirely independent, Bakr later said in an affidavit. After the reorganization and the cash withdrawals, Osama owned about 2 percent of each firm, and his shareholdings were worth about $10 million combined, according to a valuation made several years later.8
According to Sabry Ghoneim, director of communications for the Bin Ladens in Egypt, Bakr extended himself on Osama’s behalf throughout this period. Bakr “respected all the mothers of his brothers like his own mother,” Ghoneim recalled. “He always felt that Osama’s mother was weak, so as a way to dignify her, he wanted to give Osama one of the bigger projects. This was what he did with all the mothers—offer their sons projects…Bakr felt that while all his siblings were educated, Osama didn’t get a good education. Osama always felt his mother wasn’t with the rest of the mothers, because she was from a lower social class…Osama always felt broken and felt he didn’t get his share—the siblings got education abroad, and he didn’t. He would isolate himself. Bakr was very smart to try to include his brother.”9
The estimated 1989 distribution to Osama and the rest of Mohamed’s sons of about $18 million each—some in cash, some in renewed shareholdings, depending on the choices made by each brother—is largely consistent with several credible accounts of the inheritance. Yeslam Bin Laden later told Swiss television, for example, that “the amount received by each member of the family didn’t go above $20 million.” Also, Yeslam’s own Swiss tax returns, filed between 1989 and 1993, indicate that he may have taken out cash in a manner similar to Osama, around the same time—his declared financial assets suddenly jumped by about 8 million Swiss francs after 1989. In an interview, a business partner briefed by the Bin Laden family, who asked to not be identified, pegged a full share for Mohamed’s sons circa 1989 at $26 million, higher than other estimates but in the same general range. Investigators for the 9/11 Commission, drawing upon classified documents later provided to the Treasury Department by the Bin Laden family and its lawyers, estimated that Osama received a total of about $24 million between 1970 and 1993 or 1994; this figure would have included his annual allowances and dividends, and the $8 million distribution of 1989, but probably not the value of his shareholdings. (It is not clear whether the figure also included the salaries he earned when he worked at the family firm as a junior executive.) The 9/11 Commission report implied that Osama received equal annual installments of about $1 million, but this does not appear to be accurate. His annual dividends probably averaged less than half of that amount, supplemented by salaries, work bonuses, and the large one-time distribution in 1989. Despite the variations in detail, all these well-sourced estimates of the Bin Laden inheritance are in broad accord. They underline several points: Osama was wealthy, but not grotesquely so; after Salem’s death, he received a particularly large sum of cash, just as Al Qaeda was born; and following receipt of this cash distribution, under Bakr’s leadership, he remained a partner in good standing in the most important Bin Laden businesses.10
The reorganized Mohamed Bin Laden Company had sixty shareholders—all of Mohamed’s sons, except the deceased Salem and the estranged Ali; all twenty-nine of Mohamed’s daughters; his widows; and Salem’s three children. The new Saudi Bin Laden Group, destined to become an important vehicle for wealth creation under Bakr’s leadership, had just twenty shareholders, all of them sons of Mohamed. The shares in SBG were not distributed equally—Bakr, as chairman, owned the most, just under 25 percent. Only four living sons did not initially become shareholders in SBG: Ali, Yeslam, Ibrahim, and Shafiq.11
In the same period that he reorganized his father’s estate and the Bin Laden businesses, Bakr also tried to clean up Salem’s personal estate. Salem had not written a will. This in itself did not present much of a complication, however, because under Islamic inheritance law, the identity of his personal heirs was clear: his mother; his widow, Carrie; and his three children. But Salem had left financial detritus scattered around the world.12
On June 4, 1988, Bakr applied to an Islamic court in Jeddah to become the legal executor of Salem’s estate; about two months later, a Saudi judged approved his position. The judge found after evidentiary hearings that Salem “had, during his life, made a verbal will appointing and instituting his brother Bakr…to be the guardian of his minor children…and he maintained such testament until his death.” The court issued a series of instructions to Bakr, including that he “be God-fearing…in private as well as in public.”13
Under Islamic law, none of Salem’s brothers or half-brothers would inherit from his personal estate. This presented a potentially tricky question for the family, since the lines between Salem’s individual wealth and that of the family businesses they owned collectively had never been entirely clear. Salem’s private jets belonged to the companies, and Bakr kept them for business use. Salem’s estates in Florida and at Offley Chase were deemed to be private assets, however, and Bakr soon put them up for sale. He hired lawyers in Florida, Texas, and Germany to chase down outstanding financial claims that might benefit Salem’s heirs.
During these investigations, according to Thomas Dietrich, Ghalib Bin Laden, acting for Bakr, accused Dietrich of mishandling a bank account that he had maintained in Germany to fund Salem’s various adventures in Europe. Dietrich argued that the money he had received from the account reimbursed him for legitimate—if at times unorthodox—expenses directly authorized by Salem. He also said that Salem had given him title to a glider they flew together, but that the agreement had not been written up as a contract. Hounded by a German lawyer, Dietrich said, he ultimately settled the dispute by selling the glider and turning the proceeds over to the Bin Ladens; the episode left him with some bitter feelings toward Bakr. Separately, Bakr also agreed to settle, by making a payment of about $1 million, the long-running lawsuit in Canada stemming from the payment dispute with American partners over the Saudi telephone contracts Salem had won. Bakr also hired lawyers in Texas to examine a failed shopping center investment Salem had made with his attorney, Wayne Fagan, but they took no action in that case.14
One of the biggest paydays from these investigations came at the expense of Dee Howard, the San Antonio aviation pioneer who had remodeled King Fahd’s lavish 747 under the contract obtained through Salem. In a separate deal from the airplane project, Salem had invested just less than 1 million British pounds and had guaranteed an NCB loan of $1 million more to develop with Dee Howard some innovative aircraft-engine technology that could extend the flying range of certain jets. Ian Munro, who had been involved in this project, believed that Howard had profited from the technology Salem funded without properly compensating his partners. Howard denied this. Bakr hired lawyers in Florida to explore the claim, and ultimately they retained Charles Schwartz, a partner at the large Houston firm of Vinson and Elkins, to sue Dee Howard and his company. The case eventually came to trial before a civil jury in Bexar County, Texas. Appealing to the presumed skepticism of Texas jurors toward Saudi millionaires, Dee Howard’s attorney missed no opportunity to talk at trial about Salem’s riches or to refer to him as “sheikh.” Schwartz objected to all the “sheikhs” and tried to counter by emphasizing Salem’s reputation as a friend of Ronald Reagan and his success in international business. Finally, after a six-week trial highlighted by testimony from both Ian Munro and Dee Howard (the former speaking with aplomb in his British accent, the latter quarreling impetuously in a Texas drawl), the Bin Laden side won. The jury returned a verdict of $6 million in favor of Salem’s estate; the case later settled for just over half of that amount.15
To pursue the claim against Howard, Bakr had to submit certain legal briefs to the Texas court system, and in one of them, he referred to the existence, in the Jeddah courts, of an intriguing-sounding document entitled “Financial Position of the Inheritance of the Late Salem Binladin as of February 10, 1990,” which was “the only financial document filed with the court here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regarding the financial affairs” of Salem and his estate, according to Bakr. This document did not make it into the public court file in Texas, however. Its scope is unclear, but one lawyer who read it at the time recalled that it estimated the value of Salem’s personal estate as perhaps several hundred million dollars, and certainly less than one billion dollars. Even that estimate seems high, given Salem’s perpetual cash flow struggles in the last years of his life, although the estimate may reflect the value of his relatively illiquid real estate holdings in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere.16
The question of Salem’s personal wealth was also complicated by his debts. He had borrowed large sums from the National Commercial Bank, but it was not always evident, at least to his foreign business partners, when he was borrowing for a personal transaction and when for the Bin Laden companies. According to two individuals
