Benevolence International Foundation

Benevolence International Foundation
AbbreviationBIF
Formation1987; 37 years ago (1987)
Defunct1994; 30 years ago (1994)
PurposeNonprofit used as a front for terrorism

The Benevolence International Foundation (BIF; Benevolence International Fund in Canada), was a purported nonprofit charitable trust based in Saudi Arabia. It was determined to be a front for terrorist group Al-Qaeda and was banned by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267[1] and the US Department of the Treasury in November 2002.[2] The BIF's chief executive officer Enaam Arnaout began a ten-year sentence in 2003 after pleading guilty for racketeering in a U.S. federal court.[3]

The nonprofit was founded in 1987 by Adel bin Abdul-Jalil Batterjee of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Batterjee was later personally embargoed by the UN[1] from December 2004 until March 2013 and by the US, from December 2004 on.[2][4] Their website stated that they were a "humanitarian organization helping those afflicted by wars" and providing "short-term relief such as emergency food distribution, long term projects, education and self-sufficiency to the children, widowed, refugees, injured and staff of vital governmental institutions."[5] The BIF had offices in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo and Zenica), Canada, China, Croatia, Georgia (Duisi and Tbilisi), the Netherlands, Pakistan (Islamabad, Peshawar), the Palestinian Territories, Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Moscow), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh and Jeddah), Sudan, Tajikistan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Yemen.[1]

A list of the 20 main financiers of Al-Qaeda, composed by Osama bin Laden in 1988 and dubbed by him the Golden Chain, was found in the Bosnia office of Benevolence International Foundation when it was raided in March 2002.[6]

  1. ^ a b c Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1989 (2011) concerning Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities Archived 2020-02-25 at the Wayback Machine QDe.093 BENEVOLENCE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION|
  2. ^ a b "Treasury designates Benevolence International Foundation and related entities as financiers of terrorism". US Department of the Treasury. 2002-11-19. Archived from the original on 2013-05-09. Retrieved 2012-06-19.
  3. ^ "New Sentence for Charity Director" Archived 2018-07-20 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, February 18, 2006
  4. ^ "U.S. Treasury designates two individuals with ties to al Qaida, UBL former BIF leader and al-Qaida associate named under E.O. 13224". US Department of the Treasury. 2004-12-21. Archived from the original on 2012-07-06. Retrieved 2012-06-19.
  5. ^ Weimann, Gabriel (2006). Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges. US Institute of Peace Press. p. 139. ISBN 9781929223718. Retrieved 20 May 2015. helping those afflicted by wars. BIF first provides short-term relief such as emergency food distribution.
  6. ^ Matthew Levitt's Testimony Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, 10 September 2003