is the $10-Billion/annum HSA Group 

by Anthony C Heaford, 17 June 2019      (2000-words / 15-minute read)

Founded as a retail shop in the British Protectorate of Aden in 1938, the Yemeni owned Hayel Saeed Anam Group has grown into an incredibly successful multi-billion dollar global conglomerate. Their business empire spans the globe today, with interests including:

• a huge role in Indonesia’s palm oil industry (some say the largest & most explotative)
• their own shipping company based in Malaysia (Pacific Inter Link)
• owning Britain’s largest cardboard packaging manufacturer (Cepac Ltd)
• extensive and varied businesses in across Africa, in Saudi and the United Arab Emirates
• a director being a founding signatory of MIGA, a financial shell company in Switzerland

An investigation into terrorism funding originally published by Fox News in 2004 described the Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group and its subsiduaries’ activities thus: 

My personal knowledge of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group stems from my September 1997 visit to their secure headuarters compound at PO Box 5302 Taiz Yemen. That’s where and when the 9/11 plot began, on the 22 September 1997 and based on a travel warning I’d given to be exact. 

The HSA Group employees I was training - two Pakistani chemical engineers - asked me about visiting New York as tourists. Repeating a warning I’d given in Canada a few months earlier, I told them that based on my experiences travelling in the USA I expected the same group who’d bombed the World Trade Center (WTC) in 1993 to try again. I told them about the complete absence of security at Boston’s Logan airport and the potential for a hijacked civilian airliner being used as a kamakazi piloted missile to strike one of the towers. I said security was so lax when flying from Logan airport on 11 June 1997, that I could have easily carried a sub-machine gun on to the flight in my carry luggage without detection. The next day they asked me what if it wasn’t possible to carry a firearm on-board; I pointed to the box-cutters in my tool case, highlighting their potential use as a weapon and telling them I’d accidently carried these on several internal fights without ever being stopped. They then asked how attackers would carry the bomb on-board; I said a fully fueled 767 airliner was the bomb. That appeared to give credence to my travel warn of not the visit the WTC and to be very aware of potential hijacking when flying in the USA and we didn’t speak of it again.

Two days later, on the 25 September, the HSA Group HQ managing director (Saeed Alrobaidi) asked me about if I had really given this travel warning, which I confirmed. Mr Alrobaidi then proceed to arrange three meetings for me:

• A dinner meeting that night with a man called Yousef, with whom I discussed my travel warning and the consequences of such an attack in detail, including the use of multiple planes (facial recognition matches Yousef’s face with Ramzi bin al Shibh - I think they’re brothers or cousins)
• A photo line up the next morning with the HSA management team and a man they introduced as ‘the Engineer’, someone I now know was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• An unscheduled meeting when on route to the airport in Sanaa for my return flight,
  at a secluded collection of buildings one mile from Al Qa’idah town 

And that is how I know the multi-billion dollar Hayel Saeed Anam Group global conglomerate was intimately involved with the group known as Al Qaeda and with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terrorist cell, and was instrumental in the initialization of the terrorist attacks that occured nearly four years later, on 11 September 2001.

Correction, 14 April 2020: Althought Yasser Saeed’s name is on an online company listing for YemPak, he was not my contact in Taiz.

My contact’s name was Saeed Alrobaidi, a.k.a. “the Chief” to members of al Qaeda I met

Yemen - a privately owned business conglomerate has aided the organisations behind al Qaeda with financial, logistical and command support since at least 1982 - six years before al Qaeda’s recorded inception in August 1988.

That business conglomerate is called the Hayel Saeed Anam Group, founded by Mr. Hayel Saeed and his brothers in the British Protectorate of Aden in 1938. 

HSA’s Financial Support to al Qaeda

In 1984 Abdul Saeed (a family heir and a director of the HSA Group) was a founding signatory and charter member of the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (MIGA) - a financial shell company registered in Switzerland. Another of MIGA’s founding signatories and the chamber’s long-term President was Ahmed Nasreddin, a man described by Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as: 

Treasury Secretary O’Neill said this of MIGA:

Following 9/11 there was enough evidence and suspicion for the United Nations (UN) to place both MIGA and its President Ahmed Nasreddin on the watch list of entities and individuals belonging to, or affiliated with al Qaeda. In August 2002 both MIGA and Ahmed Nasreddin were added to the US Treasury’s list of financiers of terrorism. But for some reason HSA Group director and MIGA charter member Abdul Saeed was not included on the same watch list. In October 2004 the HSA Group issued a statement admitting that Mr. Saeed: 

Amazingly, and despite his documented business link to Ahmed Nasreddin - a “supporter of terrorism” involved with the funding of "al Qaeda and other terrorist-related organizations “ - Abdul Saeed has not been investigated further. Mr. Saeed's explanation is simple: he hasn’t been in business with Ahmed Nasreddin since falling out with him in 1984, and he wasn’t even aware he'd been a charter member of Swiss financial shell company MIGA for the last twenty years. MIGA and Ahmed Nasreddin were removed from the US Treasury and UN watch lists without explanation in 2007 - they weren't cleared of the charges of belonging to or being affiliated with al Qaeda, they simply agreed not to do it again.

It must be noted that the CIA was fully aware of these funding routes for Arab donations destined for the Afghan Mujaheddin. The CIA knows who the principle players were, such as Saudi sponsored Afghan Warlord and Wahhabi scholar, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. The CIA “tolerated” the misdirection of some of the funds to other more extremist causes by Sayyaf, as noted in these de-classified, 1985 CIA intel assessments of the situation: 

HSA’s Logistical Support to al Qaeda

There's two links between al Qaeda’s logistics and the Yemeni HSA Group that I want to highlight: 

First, Fox News’s 2004 suggestion that the HSA Group and its international subsidiaries were working in collusion with and in support to al Qaeda’s global network:

In the same year al Qaeda was founded (1988), the HSA Group established a new global shipping business called Pacific Interlink. During the 1990s this subsidiary company was awarded large oil-for-food contracts by the UN, permitting trade with Saddam Hussein’s sanctioned and embargoed Iraq in the 1990s. Fox News alleged in 2004 that corruption by Pacific Interlink (10% price-skimming across the contract) on this UN sanctioned trade went on to finance Osama bin-Laden and al Qaeda.

The Second link is based on my own first-hand knowledge. I know that in 1997 the HSA Group housed an al Qaeda front company in their HQ compound at P.O. Box 5302, Taiz Yemen. I know that Longulf Trading, the HSA Group’s London subsidiary, furnished this front company with over $3-million of industrial printing equipment purchased at a trade show in Chicago in April 1997. According to Barbara Bodine, a US ambassador to Yemen at the time:

The al Qaeda front company I visited in Yemen was called YemPak (link to google maps). Two of YemPak’s Pakistani employees told me in a rather self-aggrandising manner that the company name was an abbreviation of Yemen-Pakistan. They and the many other Pakistani security guards in the compound all attended the on site madrassa. They perfectly matched former Ambassador Bodine’s description of "lower level, foreign national al Qaeda members warehoused in peripheral areas”. 

The email address given for YemPak on this online listing is saeed95@hotmail.com. The given contact name is Yasser Saeed. I have assumed that Yasser Saeed, possibly of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group family, started the YemPak company in 1995.

Having personally witnessed Longulf Trading’s $3-million shopping spree in Chicago and having also visited the YemPak factory inside the HSA Group’s HQ compound in Taiz, I can say categorically that the HSA Group and its subsidiary companies hosted, supplied and supported an operational terrorist cell whose members included 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and convicted al Qaeda member Ahmed al-Darbi.

HSA’s Command Role in al Qaeda

The overall boss of the YemPak factory & possibly the entire HSA Group HQ compound in Taiz was called Mr. Saeed Alrobaidi, a man that senior members of al Qaeda called "the Chief”.

Mr. Ahmed Alrobaidi was listed as a contact by a previous technician installing a machine at a nearby site but to a seperate subsiduary company of the HSA Group.

I had very little contact with Mr. Alrobaidi until I had spoken causally with the Pakistani machine operators I was training about my fears of a 9/11 style attack. They had asked me about travel in the USA, specifically New York and I gave them a travel warning. I told them the same terrorist group who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993 would try again, but using hijacked civilian airliners as missiles next time. I described the exact method of the subsequent attacks to them. After casually confirming this prediction with me, Mr. Alrobaidi arranged three meetings:

So again based on my own first-hand experiences, I can say categorically that Mr. Saeed Alrobaidi of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group arranged my meetings with people I now know to have been al Qaeda members - people who referred to Mr. Alrobaidi as "the Chief". The reason Mr. Alrobaidi introduced me to these people was because I had spoken about a very specific method with which the United States of America could be attacked.

It was Mr. Alrobaidi's actions that transformed my careless travel warnings about a lack of airport security into al Qaeda’s most successful plot and action to date. I must concede that without the details of my warnings - specifically Logan airport's lack of security and the use of box cutters as weapons - al Qaeda may never have realised the ease with which such an attack could be orchestrated.

HSA’s Links to the British Tory Party

In 1994 three heirs and directors of the HSA Group - Abdullah Saeed, Mohammed Saeed and Dirham Saeed - became investors in a British Cayman Islands tax haven registered firm, Atlantic Investments. I only discovered this information via the leaked Paradise Papers, and only because Abdullah Saeed used the P.O. Box 5302 Taiz address for correspondence from the Cayman Islands - the same address used by the al Qaeda front company YemPak.

British banking secrecy laws and police inaction are preventing further investigation of the directors of a company that I know to have provided operational support to al Qaeda whilst also banking in a British Caribbean tax haven. The Tory members of parliament (MPs) shown below are all currently fighting tooth-and-nail to preserve those off-shore banking secrecy laws. 

Graham Brady MP is chairman of the Parliamentary Group for the Cayman Islands, perks of which have included an £8000 government funded visit for Brady and his wife to the Caribbean, apparently to discuss tax avoidance issues with tax dodgers in the tropical paradise.  Mr. Brady is also my constituency MP and consequently is fully aware of my allegations. Under my instruction Mr. Brady has already passed intelligence dossiers containing my evidenced claims of the HSA Group’s links to al Qaeda to British military intelligence and the political officer of the US embassy in London.

I also have financial transaction information that could prove Graham Brady MP profited from political donations that ultimately originated from the success of an al Qaeda terrorist attack, one specifically instigated by the Cayman Island banking HSA Group. I will share that information should a formal investigation ever take place.

Despite first reporting these matters to British security service over ten years ago (February 2009), other than a 2018 invitation to interview from a team of the US 9/11 military commission investigators I've still had no formal acknowledgement of my claims, specifically nothing from British security services. I declined the Pentagon’s  invitation to interview because they refused to discuss my witness status with me; a reasonable request I thought, given the information I'm sharing.

I don’t know what is going on at the Guantanamo military prison or court at the moment,
but I strongly suspect that it'll have very little to do with seeking truth or serving justice.

Context

One of Osama bin-Laden’s greatest allies during his 1980’s US-backed Afghan Jihad was Yemeni General Ali Mohsen, the half-brother of the late Yemeni President Saleh. General Mohsen recruited fighters from Arabia and beyond for the foreign mujahedeen brigades fighting in Afghanistan, even travelling there himself to meet with bin-Laden.

In 1987, just as the War in Afghanistan was drawing to a close, Osama bin-Laden is known to have made plans to travel to Yemen and I think it is very likely he did make that trip to his ancestral homeland. It is also known that foreign fighters subsequently returning from Afghanistan were allowed to settle in Yemen, where they were made welcome by General Mohsen.

In the early 1990s those resettled foreign fighters were actually trained by a CIA contractor, Billy Waugh, as noted in his 2004 autobiography:

“I worked right there with these al-Qaeda operatives and heard these arguments [about the badness of US policy] firsthand many times, especially during an assignment in Yemen.”

During the 1994 Yemeni civil war those resettled fighters went on to form their own brigades that fought besides the Yemeni army under General Mohsen’s command and on behalf of his half-brother, President Saleh.

Today General Mohsen is the Saudi backed Vice President of Yemen and part of the same coalition that is known to have armed and colluded with al Qaeda during the last five years of coalition attacks on Yemen.