RIYADH, October 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - According to new figures released by Saudi Arabia's central bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the assets of Saudi Arabia's 10 commercial banks were up 8.1% over the 12 months to September 2001.

"The coffers of Saudi Arabia's banks are swelling with money brought home following the 11 September attacks last year," BBC News Online reported Tuesday, October 29.

Total assets were $133.4bn, having climbed steadily over the past year from $123.4bn at the end of September 2001, it said, adding that bank deposits grew even faster, rising 11.5% to $81.4bn as money was repatriated from overseas.

Rapid growth in the money supply - the amount of currency actually available for use in the kingdom - supports the view that repatriation has driven the build-up in funds, the central bank said, according to BBC. Liquidity is up 10% on a year ago, it said.

In August, a report on Saudi investors withdrawing their assets in the United States fearing they might be frozen was the main business news item in the Middle East.

There were mixed reactions to the report published in the Financial Times, August 21, that Saudi investments worth 200 billion dollars fled the United States, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul-Aziz said Thursday, August 22: "There may be some withdrawals, but not of the magnitude mentioned in the FT."

Al-Walid, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, said that as far he was concerned, he was increasing his investments in some U.S. companies, including Citigroup.

Bankers in several Arab countries confirmed that Arab funds were searching for new investment opportunities, but were unable to say how much or whether they were fleeing the United States.

Also in August, the U.K. daily newspaper, the Telegraph, said that Saudi's richest investors are threatening to pull billions of dollars out of America in anger at allegations they helped fund Osama bin Laden.

A lawsuit filed by relatives of 900 people who were killed in the September 11 attacks is provoking fury among wealthy Saudis, the Telegraph said.

The suit filed in a Washington court seeking damages of $100,000 billion, names three members of the Saudi royal family, including Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, the paper reported, adding that the lawsuit alleges that Saudi money has "for years been funneled to encourage radical anti-Americanism as well as to fund the Al-Qaeda terrorists".

Banks and charities named in the suit are calling on Saudi Arabia to review its financial and political ties to the U.S., the paper said.

The threat comes as foreign investment in the U.S. dries up because of business scandals, lower corporate earnings and the collapse of the technology boom, said the Telegraph.

According to U.S. government figures, foreigners put $124 billion into the U.S. last year, down from $301 billion in 2000, the paper said, quoting economists as saying that the reluctance of wealthy outsiders to expand their business interests in America is a major threat to the world's largest economy.

Saudi investors have $750 billion in the U.S. A mass walkout would seriously impede U.S. attempts to pull away from recession, said the Telegraph.

In a commentary sent to a Lebanese daily newspaper July 17, prominent U.K. reporter Patrick Seale, considered by many as an authority in Middle Eastern affairs, said that the American markets have lost their appeal to Arab investors.

Writing in the Daily Star, Seale said he asked several international bankers about how much Arab money is actually invested in the U.S. and the estimates he has got range between $400 billion and $800 billion.

The bankers made a distinction, however, between private assets held by Arab families and individuals and “official” assets held by Arab states and commercial banks, said Seale.

“Of the two, official assets were the easier to estimate. I was told that the official assets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman currently held in the United States were possibly in the region of $350 billion to $400 billion,” he said.

Some bankers suggested that private Arab foreign assets might account for another $300 billion, but where these funds were and to whom they belonged was a gray area which no one seemed inclined to discuss in detail, he added.

“Arab money, I was told, was now flowing out of the United States, and this trend was accelerating,” said Seale.

The rise of anti-Arab sentiments in the U.S. following the events of September 11 and the anti-Arab policies of the Bush administration were among the reasons Seale was given. There was also the scandals and the “great uncertainty afflicting U.S. financial markets and the U.S. economy,” he said.

Meanwhile, Saudi billionaire Prince Talal called on the Middle East Tuesday, October 29, to embrace globalization if it wants to escape the economic malaise gripping the region.

"It is obvious that self-sufficiency has become an obsolete notion, but this region has largely escaped this," Prince Walid told the Dubai Strategy Forum.

"The Middle East has an economic malaise. Trade is stagnant and there is anemic growth," he said. Networking and forming alliances and mergers are the "only hope the region has to prosper," he added.

The prince said the region's "introverted" business culture meant that companies "cannot cohere or mesh with those abroad ... It is a lamentable state of affairs.

"The sad part is that the Middle East and North Africa region are not historically like this," he said, recalling bygone trade routes to Europe, Africa and Asia, and blaming a loss of networks for the regions economic decline.

On Gulf ties with the United States, Prince Walid said there "were no doubts things after 9/11 have changed dramatically ... After 9/11, there was a big gap between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

"As Arabs, Muslims, and particularly Saudis, we must try to build bridges with the West in general and the United States in particular.