Khalid bin Mahfouz (Arabic: خالد بن محفوظ; December 26, 1949 – August 16, 2009[1]) was a Saudi Arabian billionaire, banker, businessman, investor and former chairman of the National Commercial Bank (NCB).
With a personal wealth estimated to be around $6 billion , Bin Mahfouz ranked 24th in Arabian Business magazine's list of the world's most influential Arabs in 2008.
[2] In the same year, Bin Mahfouz ranked number 214 in Forbes Billionaires List[3] After the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, considerable suspicion fell on Saudi financiers and charities as sources of financing for terrorism and Khalid Bin Mahfouz faced accusations in books, newspapers and magazines that he and his family had funneled money to Al Qaeda.
[4] In the 1970s Khalid bin Mahfouz bought and lived in a $3.5 million chateaux-style house, later named "Versailles," in the River Oaks area of Houston.
[8] This allegation came from high-profile people, book authors and well respected newspapers in the US and Europe such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
"[10] Bin Mahfouz was a non-executive director of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a financial conglomerate later convicted of money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and many other crimes.
According to reports, high-placed Saudi businessmen transferred millions of dollars through NCB to charities operating as fronts for al-Qaeda.
NCB has not issued audited numbers since 1998, but it did acknowledge last year that provisions for bad loans in 1999 and 2000 reached $934 million, covering 86% of its doubtful debt.
[13] He eventually won a string of lawsuits against writers who had accused him of supporting terrorism, with a notable exception of Rachel Ehrenfeld.
The controversy springs from a report prepared by French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard and his research agency, the JCB Consulting Group, for the President of the Security Council of the United Nations in December 2002.