Ce-UnPac'd : Shadows of Power - The Dirhem Abdo Saeed Anam Exposé

All claims herein are third-party allegations and unverified. Sources are hyperlinked. Readers should conduct their own due diligence.

Picture this: a man striding through the chaos of Yemen’s dusty streets, where the air smells of spice and survival, then cutting to the sterile gleam of a UK boardroom, all polished wood and power plays. That’s Dirhem Abdo Saeed Anam – Vice Chairman of the Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group, a sprawling empire born in 1938 that’s now a global beast with over 35,000 souls on its payroll. Food, finance, packaging – it’s got its fingers in every pie. Dirhem’s the poster boy: Managing Director of HSA UK Operations, Chairman of Cepac Ltd, Britain’s biggest cardboard kingpin. He’s the guy handing out education through Al-Saeed University, feeding the hungry with UN handshakes. A fucking saint, yeah?

But hold the halo. There’s a shadow creeping in, a whisper from the gutter that says this saint might have danced with devils. A blog called The Quiet Mancunian drops a bomb: Dirhem and his family allegedly bankrolled terrorism in the 1990s, linked to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the bastard who blueprinted 9/11. Shell companies, secret cash, a web of shit that stinks to high heaven. It’s raw, it’s ugly, and it demands a hard look.

The Accusations: Blood Money and Boardrooms

Let’s cut to the chase. The Quiet Mancunian claims that in March 1997, Dirhem signed up as a director of Atlantic Investments, a Cayman Islands shell company, alongside two other Saeed family members. They used PO Box 5302 Taiz Yemen – the same address as YemPak, which the blog says was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s front, squatting right in HSA Group’s headquarters. Suspicious? You bet your arse. Then, in April 1997, Longulf Trading execs – where Dirhem’s the boss – allegedly jetted to Chicago, dropping $3 million on printing machinery. Not for themselves, but for Mohammed’s outfit. A little thank-you note in steel and ink, maybe?

It digs deeper. Back in 1982, HSA’s Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed handed power of attorney to Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a known al Qaeda money man. By 1984, Nasreddin had spun up MIGA in Switzerland, later tagged by the UN and US as an Al Qaeda cash cow. And Cepac Ltd? The blog says that in early 2000, this cardboard empire, chaired by Dirhem, slipped a $1 million “gift payment” to his old employer. Why? Fuck knows. The story’s got holes, but it’s a hell of a hook.

The Smell Test

Before you torch the guy, let’s sniff this out. The Quiet Mancunian isn’t The Times. It’s a lone blogger’s rant, not a newsroom with a fact-checking army. I’ve dug through the digital dirt – mainstream press, government reports, anything – and found sweet fuck all to back this up. Search Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Dirhem together? Crickets, unless you’re on that blog. Human Rights Watch mentions Mohammed’s kids getting nabbed, but no HSA or Dirhem in sight. It’s a house of cards built on quicksand – intriguing, but shaky as hell.

More Dirt, Different Pile

Terrorism aside, HSA’s got other stains. In 2018, Greenpeace nailed them for bulldozing forests under their subsidiaries. Unilever yanked orders until the mess was sorted, and HSA stayed mute, per The Daily Telegraph. Then, 2021 brought whispers of a shady deposit deal with Saudi Arabia and Yemen – HSA called in an audit to scrub the slate. These aren’t terrorism, but they’re not choirboy moves either. The group’s got a knack for dodging the spotlight.

The Silent Treatment

What’s Dirhem saying? Bugger all. No direct rebuttals to the terrorism claims surfaced in my hunt. There’s a 2004 snippet where he shrugged off a shell company tied to Al Qaeda, blaming a “forgotten power of attorney” to Nasreddin – who was UN-blacklisted from 2002 to 2007. Otherwise, HSA’s PR machine churns out feel-good vibes: education, aid, UN love-ins. It’s a glossy mask, but it doesn’t answer the big question.

Cepac Ltd: Cardboard and Cash

Dirhem chairs Cepac Ltd, Britain’s cardboard heavyweight, launched in May 1997. The Quiet Mancunian alleges that in early 2000, it funneled a $1 million gift to Dirhem’s former employer. No proof beyond the blog, mind you. Officially, Cepac claims to be all about sustainable packaging and innovation – boring, clean, corporate. We’ve shown another side of them in other pieces, but in this tale, it’s another dark, dark thread in the tangle.

The Reckoning

So, where’s the truth? The terrorism claims are a gut punch – financing 9/11-level evil isn’t petty theft. But the evidence is thinner than a junkie’s wrist, resting on one blogger’s word. HSA’s got other baggage, and their silence on this is loud as fuck. Is Dirhem a mastermind or a scapegoat? I’m not your judge. Maybe he’s clean, maybe he’s dirty, or maybe the world’s too knackered to care. Dig deeper if you dare, but don’t swallow every story whole. Power’s a messy bitch. We’ve contacted the group for comment.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

All allegations of terrorism financing are based solely on posts by The Quiet Mancunian and have not been independently verified.

Sources

Ce-UnPac’d : Shadows of Power – The Dirhem Abdo Saeed Anam Exposé