Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammad “Bin Laden became one of the most powerful men in the [Saudi] kingdom, even helping to put King Faisal on the throne in the early 1960s [November 2, 1964] and paying the wages of the entire Saudi civil service for the following four months because of a hole in the nation’s coffers. It was a stunning risk that was richly rewarded: Faisal was so grateful he decreed that all construction contracts should go to bin Laden, and even briefly made Mohammad the Minister for Public Works. Mohammad bin Laden’s company has since become a massive commercial entity, responsible for building much of Saudi Arabia, and rebuilding Kuwait and Beirut, with offices and palaces across the Middle East and an estimated turnover in the mid-1990s of $36 billion.”
– Simon Reeve, The New Jackals, Page 158