#3
Yeslam Bin Ladin is the former husband of Carmen Bin Ladin, the author of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia. I read the book last week. She indicates that their marriage broke up largely because he became kind of mentally ill. He became distracted, paranoid. Something went wrong with him mentally, but it wasn't clear (at least to this reader) exactly what went wrong.
In light of this posting, I wonder if he was being extorted to divert family money to Osama Bin Laden.
Although Yeslam was the tenth son, he was the best educated and the most capable for the management of the family business. His role in the family business is therefore somewhat disproportionately large in relation to his family ranking.
Yeslam seems to be a relatively decent man, as his wife desribes him. He studied in the USA, and he admired this country. When he returned to Saudi Arabia, he hoped and expected that his own country would reform in the coming years. Developments turned in the wrong decision, however, beginning in 1979, when the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the mosque in Mecca was briefly captured by religious radicals. The Saudi royal family then allowed its conservative religious leaders much more of a free hand.
Anyway, that's how Carmen Bin Laden recounts the events.
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PARIS: A French judge has widened a probe into the financial network surrounding the family of Osama Bin Laden after questioning his half-brother and learning of a 241 million euro transfer to Pakistan, Le Monde daily said. Investigating magistrate Renaud Van Ruymbeke received court authorisation to extend his investigation after Yeslam Bin Laden was questioned on September 27 over allegations of links with the organisers of attacks in 2001 in the US, the paper said in its Saturday edition. As a result, Van Ruymbeke was adding "other instances of money laundering" to the probe already under way, Le Monde said. The court was unreachable for comment on Saturday. On December 5, 2001, French authorities opened an investigation into financial transfers carried out through Paris between firms grouped within the Saudi Investment Company (SICO) run by Yeslam Bin Laden, who also manages some assets of the family's Saudi Binladin Group (SBG).