Why Did Mr. Bin Mahfouz bring libel actions in England?
Though citizens of Saudi Arabia, Khalid Bin Mahfouz and his family have maintained residences and held business and investment interests in England for decades. The Bin Mahfouz family are well known in business and financial circles in London, both for their international business activities and as the former owners and operators of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, that country’s largest bank, prior to the sale of their interests in 1999. In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the Bin Mahfouz family were subject to a variety of false allegations linking the family and their bank to the funding of terrorism, primarily through their support of Islamic charities. The intensive “war on terror” and terror funding conducted by the United States and many other countries throughout the world made legal confrontation of these claims a practical necessity for the Bin Mahfouz family. However unfounded, these accusations of complicity with terrorism are profoundly damaging a
