News

from Newsweek

EXCLUSIVE 
        
A Troubling Money Trail 

The Bush administration�s latest crackdown on terrorist finances could touch some raw 
political nerves. Last week federal agents raided more than a dozen U.S.-based Islamic 
businesses and charities looking for ties to Al Qaeda and other terror groups. NEWSWEEK 
has learned that a main target of the raids, a Saudi-backed charity called the SAFA Trust, 
has provided funding for an influential Islamic political group with close ties to the GOP and 
the Bush White House. The group, the Islamic Institute, which operates out of the same 
D.C. office suite as GOP activist Grover Norquist, was set up in 1999 to mobilize American 
Muslim support for the Republican Party. Since then Norquist and the group�s chairman, 
Khaled Saffuri, have arranged meetings between Islamic leaders and top Bush officials.

Funding for the institute�s $170,000-a-year operation could prove problematic. Saffuri 
confirmed the authenticity of checks obtained by NEWSWEEK showing the institute 
received $20,000 from the SAFA Trust and another $20,000 from Abdurhanman 
Alamoudi, a board member of the Success Foundation, whose offices were also raided. 
(The institute has also received foreign funding, including $55,000 from Kuwait and more 
than $200,000 from Qatar.) Steve Emerson, who tracks U.S.-based terror groups, said the 
checks "raise questions as to whether militant Islamic groups were trying to acquire 
political influence" in the United States. But Saffuri denied the funds came with any 
strings. Norquist, an institute board member, said the group "promotes democracy and 
free markets. Any effort to imply guilt by association is incompetent McCarthyism."

Sources close to the case told NEWSWEEK the raids were prompted by evidence 
showing the SAFA Trust and related groups transferred millions of dollars to obscure 
entities on the Isle of Man, a notorious money-laundering haven. Records also show 
that the president of SAFA Trust once served on the board of a firm associated with 
Al Taqwa, an international financial network whose assets were frozen by President 
Bush. So far no charges have been filed, and U.S. Islamic groups called the raids 
an "outrageous" violation of their civil liberties.

        Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
 

Back to Main Page.