WASHINGTON, Nov 23: The FBI has subpoenaed records of dozens of bank accounts belonging to the Saudi Embassy, US newspapers reported on Sunday.
This is the first time in Washington that the bank records of an embassy were subpoenaed. Even during the Cold War days the US administration never ordered a probe into the financial dealings of a Soviet bloc country.
The report said the FBI was investigating an estimated $300 million the embassy spent in the US every year to see if some of the money also ended up in the hands of extremist organizations.
Relations between the two countries have strained after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, although officially both are close allies in the US-led war against terror.
The report said the wide-ranging investigation of the embassy’s funds began this summer and had continued since then. Earlier this year, the two countries also established a joint task force to track terrorist financing in Saudi Arabia.
The FBI’s Washington field office has now subpoenaed the records of dozens of Saudi bank accounts to determine whether the Saudi government money knowingly or unknowingly helped fund extremists in the United States.
The report pointed out that the US agencies had investigated private Saudi funds and charities in the past but this was the first investigation to directly probe into the Saudi government funds.
Several newspapers reported that the National Security Council, which operates from the White House, directly approved the probe. The council, which is headed by security adviser Condoleezza Rice, had received requests from several congressional leaders from both the ruling and opposition parties for the action.
The investigation focuses on the financial activities of the Islamic and cultural affairs office of the embassy as well as the activities of Saudi consulates around the United States. The action outraged Saudi officials, who said if the Bush administration needed information, it could have simply asked for it.
One Saudi official in Washington said the embassy had already turned over its spending record for the past 20 years to US officials, adding: “We do not understand what then was the need to take a legal action?”
Saudi officials told reporters that although large sums of money passed through the embassy, most of it was for scholarships for thousands of Saudi students and government-paid medical treatment for Saudi subjects.
In all, the officials said, about $17 million over the course of 20 years — less than $1 million a year — went to supporting Islamic institutions and religious work in the United States. In contrast, he said, each of the estimated 4,000 Saudi students studying here received about $40,000 a year, a total of $160 million a year.
“We keep complete record of our finances. We are not a banana republic,” one Saudi official said.
