Al-Barakat

[3] After the 9/11 attacks in United States, the US government listed Al-Barakat as a terrorist entity,[4] seized its assets, and detained several people associated with the company.

This deletion completes a long process of delistings that spanned two decades and begun at the UN Sanctions Committee to finally conclude in early 2020 at OFAC for owners, executives, and member companies of the group.

It rose to prominence after the start of the civil war in Somalia in 1991, when money transfer business, known as hawalas, had become the only way for expat Somalis to send funds to their relatives in the absence of a formal banking system.

Ahmed Sheikh Ali Samatar is a renowned computer and systems engineer who co-founded Al-Barakaat, a global money transfer and telecommunications company headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Born in Somalia, Samatar graduated from the Somali National University with a degree in computer engineering before pursuing his postgraduate studies in the United States.

In the early 1990s, Samatar, along with Ahmed Noor Ali Jim'ale, founded Al-Barakaat, which became one of the world's largest private money transfer and telecommunications companies.

The 9/11 Commission Report later confirmed that the bulk of the funds used to finance the assault on the Twin Towers were not sent through the hawala system, but rather by inter-bank wire transfer to the SunTrust Bank in Florida.

Additionally, the FBI agent who had led the second U.S. delegation said diligent investigation in the UAE revealed no "smoking gun" evidence — either testimonial or documentary — showing that Al-Barakat was funding AIAI or al-Qaeda.

The two major claims, that Bin Ladin was an early investor in Al-Barakat and that the firm diverted a certain portion of its money through its system to AIAI or Al-Qaeda, could not be verified.