Ptech owner making headlines in Turkey, Bosnia

"Prime Ministry insists on al-Qadi’s assets remaining frozen," Turkish Daily News, September 6, 2006:

"The Prime Ministry has appealed a Council of State 10th Bureau decision to suspend a Cabinet resolution freezing the assets of Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman and reputed al-Qaeda financier on Sept. 1, it was reported on Tuesday.

...The Council of State 10th Bureau had ordered the return of the assets, a decision that was made on technical grounds. Due to the appeal, the case will now go to the Council of State Administrative Cases Council.

...The decision came after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s defense of al-Qadi as a “philanthropist,” for which he was criticized. “I know Yasin and I believe in him as I believe in myself,” Erogan told NTV in an interview on July 11. “It is not possible for him to establish ties with a terrorist organization and support it. … He is a person who has no specialty other than being a philanthropist.”

...The Turkish media has accused Erdogan’s government of blocking an investigation into reported money transfers to al-Qadi in the late ‘90s by one of his top advisors.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) last week filed a criminal complaint against eight people, including al-Qadi, Erdogan’s advisor Cüneyd Zapsu, Abdulaziz Zapsu, Mustafa Latif Topbas, Mehmet Fatih Sarac, Ibrahim Halit Cizmeci, Wa’el Julaidan and Gaye Zapsu for laundering money and financing terrorism.

The assets of al-Qadi, who heads the Saudi-based Muwafaq Foundation, also were frozen by the European Union. U.S. Treasury officials allege the organization he heads is an al-Qaeda front used to funnel millions of dollars to the global terror organization."

“WEEKLY CLAIMS WARTIME BOSNIAN PRESIDENT LINKED TO AL-QAEDA,” AKI, September 8, 2006:

“Bosnia's wartime president, the late Alija Izetbegovic received money from a Saudi businessman, Yassin al-Kadi - who has been designated by the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union as a financier of al-Qaeda - Sarajevo weekly Slobodna Bosna (Free Bosnia) has reported, quoting local and foreign sources.

Izetbegovic, a Muslim, who died in 2003, received 195,000 dollars in 1996 from al-Kadi, Slobodna Bosna alleges.

The weekly said that Bosnian authorities obtained the information on this transaction from a British bank in the process of investigation of activities of al-Kadi’s humanitarian organisation, Mufavak…

… Izetbegovic led Bosnia to independence from the former Yugoslavia, and thousands of foreign fighters or 'mujahadeen' from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims in bloody 1992-1995 civil war. The war effort was partly financed under the cover of 'humanitarian' organisations from Islamic countries, according to intelligence sources. …”