Al Taqwa Bank

The Al Taqwa Bank (occasionally Bank al Taqwa or simply Al Taqwa) is a financial institution incorporated in 1988. It is based out of The Bahamas, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Al Taqwa Bank was accused by the United States of having links to Islamist terror organizations, and that it was a major source of funds for the operations of Osama bin Laden and his associates, the banks Manager Mr Nada was put on the "special definition GLOBAL terrorist". On August 2, 2010, the bank was removed from a list of entities and individuals associated with Al Qaeda that is maintained by the UN Security Council.

The Al Taqwa (Arabic for "Fear of God") network of financial companies was set up in 1988 by prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, most notably Al Taqwa's chairman and co-founder, Youssef Nada. Later, Swiss Islamic convert Ahmed Huber, a vocal admirer of Adolf Hitler, was hired because the company needed at least one Swiss citizen on its board. Another co-founder was François Genoud, one of the key managers of Nazi assets after the second world war who later attained notoriety as the publisher of Joseph Goebbels' diaries.

Al Taqwa Bank was targeted early on by the United States because of iits known links to Osama Bin Laden and terrorism. The U.S. also targeted it because its allegedly terror-related funds indirectly filter through the banking system of the United States, through its use of correspondent accounts, to various terror organizations around the world. At the time Al Taqwa Bank assets were frozen it held $220m of money destined to fund terror activity against the West, such accounts with the Swiss Banca del Gottardo, which in turn holds correspondent accounts with Citibank and the Bank of New York.

Al Taqwa counted two family members of Osama Bin Laden among its shareholders. The family itself countered that this cannot "rationally be imputed to connote any hint of support for Osama."

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