Bank system in UAE under review
Our Banking Bureau
22 October 2001

New Delhi: The United Arab Emirates’ banking practices are under review after government officials said they believe the financial system was used as a transfer point for the suspects of the 11 September attacks in the United States, CNN has reported.

The review stems from the fact that a man believed to be one of the financial chiefs for suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden went to Dubai, the UAE commercial centre, from Qatar in late June and remained until 12 September, when he flew to Karachi, Pakistan.

Investigative sources say just prior to the 11 September attacks, three of the suspected hijackers sent more than $15,000 to a man known as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawasawi, a man investigators say stayed in Dubai for two months and is believed to have been one of the al Qaeda money men behind the attacks.

The UAE government said earlier in October that two days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a man it then identified only as a Saudi Arabian passport holder had received wired payments from three of the hijackers - Waleed M Alshehri; Marwan Al-Shehhi, who is believed to have been at the controls of the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Center; and Mohamed Atta. Atta is believed to have been the commander of the 19 hijackers, and Shehhi is the only confirmed citizen of the UAE among them.

Investigators now say they believe that the man who wired the three hijackers’ money was al-Hawasawi. US investigators allege that Atta received $100,000 in start-up money wired from the UAE to banks in Florida to underwrite the plot.

“Atta was like any adult expatriate in the UAE,” Sultan Nasser al Suwaidi, governor of the Central Bank of the UAE, told CNN. “I'm sure people could not predict two years ago that he would become a hijacker and a terrorist.”

Al Suwaidi said Atta opened his account and closed his account one year ago, and his account was not with the Dubai Islamic Bank - it was with Citibank. “If Citibank was not able to predict the future of Mohamed Atta, I don't think anybody can,” al Suwaidi said, pointing to the anti-money laundering laws the US bank follows.

UAE officials said they have found no bank accounts linked to individuals or organisations on two lists provided to them by the US. But they say they are ready to help. Complicating the investigation is a matter of language translation. Names supplied in English could correspond to various names when translated into Arabic. Many individuals carry the same name. So without middle initials or dates of birth, banks run the risk of freezing the wrong bank account, officials say.

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