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Business executives in Saudi Arabia continue to transfer tens of millions of dollars to bank accounts linked to Osama Bin Laden, accused of the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa.
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Senior U.S. intelligence officials say the money transfers began more than nine years ago and have been used to finance several attacks by Bin Laden, including an attempted assassination in 1995 of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia.
The United States said it would continue to meet Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to discuss demands for the expulsion of Saudi-born Bin Laden, but officials cautioned that they expected no dramatic moves soon.
The United States accuses Bin Laden, who lives in hiding in Afghanistan, of being behind explosions at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in August 1998 which killed 224 people. Washington also believes Bin Laden is implicated in a number of other planned attacks.
Bin Laden has denied the charges.
A Saudi government audit acquired by U.S. intelligence showed that five of Saudi Arabia's top business executives ordered the National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom's largest, to transfer personal funds, along with $3 million diverted from a Saudi pension fund, to New York and London banks.
The money was deposited into the accounts of Islamic charities, including Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief, that serve as fronts for Bin Laden, according to the report.
Intelligence sources said the businessmen, who are worth more than $5 billion, were paying Bin Laden ``protection money'' to stave off attacks on their businesses in Saudi Arabia, intelligence officials said.
Bin Laden, whose family runs the largest Saudi construction firm, has called for the overthrow of the Saudi government.
The money transfers were discovered in after the royal family ordered an audit of NCB and its founder and former chairman, Khalid bin Mahfouz.
His successor, Mohammad Hussein Al-Amoudi, also heads the Capitol Trust Bank in New York and London, which U.S. and British officials are investigating for allegedly transferring money to Bin Laden.
Amoudi's Washington lawyer, Vernon Jordan, could not be reached for comment. Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan declined to comment on the report.