[11] In September 2016, Alrajhi became the first bank in Saudi Arabia to partner with the Ministry of Housing, participating in the government's plans to increase home ownership by offering mortgages funded in part by the state.
[7] Traditionally, the bank had focused on consumer banking, but had begun diversifying its revenues with plans to adjust focus towards mid-corporate and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business as the Saudi government implemented its broader social reform agenda and the National Transformation Programme (NTP).
Alrajhi-related nonprofit and business ventures located in Virginia were subjected to searches and seizures by U.S. law officials trying to disrupt terrorist financing activities in the United States in 2002.
The Supreme Court's order brought a final close to claims asserted against the bank and its officers by victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks.
[14] In March 2002, as part of Operation Green Quest, a covert U.S. Treasury attempt to disrupt terrorist financing in the United States, U.S. law enforcement agents entered and searched 14 interwoven business and nonprofits in Virginia that were associated with the SAAR Foundation, a private charitable foundation established in 1983 that Sulaiman bin Abdulaziz Alrajhi and two other Alrajhi family members were on its initial board of directors.
A law enforcement affidavit stated that over 100 nonprofit and businesses in Virginia were a part of the “Safa Group,” which were believed to be “engaged in the money laundering tactic of ‘layering’ to hide from law enforcement authorities the trail of its support for terrorists.” Subsequent 2006 federal grand jury subpoenas showed Alrajhi Bank was not directly related to the entities subject to the March 2002 search.
The decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit cited by the Staff Report in this regard indicated those matters involved counsel that has never represented either the bank or members of the Alrajhi family.
The list, an image of a scanned document on a CD-ROM, was found during a search of the Bosnian offices of the Benevolence International Foundation, a Saudi-based nonprofit later designated a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department.
[13] In 2003, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a classified document entitled, “Al Rajhi Bank: Conduit for Extremist Finance.” According to Glenn Simpson of the Wall Street Journal, the CIA report ended with: “Senior Al Rajhi family members have long supported Islamic extremists and probably know that terrorists use their bank.” The 2003 CIA report stated that in 2000, Alrajhi Bank couriers “delivered money to the Indonesian insurgent group Kompak to fund weapons purchases and bomb-making activities.”[17] Alrajhi Bank filed a defamation lawsuit in 2004 against the Wall Street Journal for a 2002 article that wrote about how Saudi Arabia was monitoring several accounts because of terrorist worries.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States found that the hijackers had accounts with and moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through many banks, including mainstream U.S. banks, but "[c]ontrary to persistent media reports, no financial institution filed a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) in connection with any transaction of any of the 19 hijackers before 9/11 ...." This, however, “was not unreasonable” in the Commission's view because, “[e]ven in hindsight, there is nothing ... to indicate that any SAR should have been filed or the hijackers otherwise reported to law enforcement.”[13] In response to these allegations Alrajhi Bank continues to condemn terrorism and deny any part in financing terrorists.