Billionaire Mohammed Al-Amoudi accused of funding al-Qaeda in secret Pentagon report

A classified US intelligence report names Mohammed Al-Amoudi, the Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire who owned Swedish fuel company Preem for three decades, as having been involved in financing Osama bin Laden, Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported. Al-Amoudi denies the allegations.

The Pentagon report, dated 2002, was obtained by SVT’s investigative program Uppdrag granskning. According to SVT, it contains account numbers and the names of companies and people allegedly used to move money from Al-Amoudi’s companies in Saudi Arabia to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

The report alleges that the costs of building a hospital in Saudi Arabia, known as the Al-Salamah project, were inflated and that the difference, about 360 million Swedish kronor, was passed on to bin Laden, according to Swedish media accounts of the program.

Al-Amoudi denies the claims

Al-Amoudi rejected the allegations in a statement to the program through his press office. “I did not know about, did not approve and was not involved in any over-invoicing or diversion of money from the Al-Salamah project to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda or any related party,” he said.

He has also pointed out that intelligence material is not evidence tested in court. Al-Amoudi has not been charged, convicted, sanctioned or designated as a terrorist on the basis of the information in the report.

He has fought similar claims before. In Britain, he sued French author Jean-Charles Brisard, who had published claims portraying him as a knowing financier of bin Laden’s network, according to a 2011 UK court ruling.

Questions for Sweden’s security service

The program also reported that Sweden’s security service, Säpo, was warned about Al-Amoudi’s possible links to terrorism as early as 1994, the year he bought OK Petroleum, the company that became Preem. Al-Amoudi was investigated for suspected terror financing by both American and European intelligence services in the early 2000s, but Säpo did not open its own investigation, according to the program.

The revelations are likely to raise questions in Sweden about how much its authorities knew about one of the country’s most prominent foreign investors.

Sweden’s biggest foreign investor

Al-Amoudi paid 5.9 billion kronor in cash for OK Petroleum in 1994. The business, later renamed Preem, owns Sweden’s largest oil refineries, and Al-Amoudi became the country’s biggest foreign investor. He was awarded the Order of the Polar Star by Sweden’s king. He ceased to be Preem’s owner at the start of 2026.

Born in Ethiopia to a Yemeni father and an Ethiopian mother, Al-Amoudi built a business empire spanning oil refining, construction, mining and agriculture, with large investments in Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Ethiopia through his MIDROC group. He was once ranked among the world’s richest people.

He was among the businessmen detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh during Saudi Arabia’s 2017 anti-corruption crackdown and was released in early 2019.