I don't know - I'd tend to trust Fisk's word on Middle Easter subjects - but a government report not naming a company may have more authority.

If you hunt it out, there's a long extract in Vanity Fair from a book by one of Osama Bin Laden's sons which is interesting. I vaguely thought the family had been wealthy for generations, but no, Osama's father worked his way out of utter poverty before getting the hugely lucrative contracts in Mecca and Medina.

It's always seemed to me a strange psychological quirk in Osama Bin Laden that his father died in a plane crash and he repeatedly tried to use planes as deadly weapons.

But we're straying away from the subject again. Looking at lists of elected and appointed leaders of countries and of leaders who inherited the honour, it appears to me that a huge majority came from the civil service of their countries, or from work within their political parties. Even the royals could be said to work for the civil service.