"It must be a smell that comes from way back, there’s something about it," Binladin told AFP, enthusing about the "Yeslam" perfume he presented at a trade fair on the French Riviera last month.

As he sipped tea in the cafe of a luxury Geneva department store, the Saudi-Swiss investor praised the Italian-born specialist in Grasse, the French perfume capital, who helped him choose the 80 euro-a-flask (103 dollars) fragrance.

"It’s the women’s one that struck me," added Binladen, one of Osama’s 53 brothers and sisters.

A range of products using his family name had been planned before the deadly attacks on the United States and the brand-with the spelling he has always used-was registered as a trademark, Binladin said.

Commercial use of the family name had been dropped "for the moment" out of "sensitivity".

"I could not use Binladin any more and Yeslam is a rare name, it means "bliss" although there is no single translation," the Geneva-based father of three added.

Jet-setting Yeslam is pinning his future on the "floral sensuality" of lily of the valley, narcissus, jasmine, sandalwood, ylang-ylang and musk, while his half brother Osama is thought to rove between hideouts in the wilderness between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although he refrained from criticism, Binladin reiterated that he has had no contact with Osama since 1981.

"It was a distant relationship. I left Saudi Arabia when I was six or seven, I spent my life in boarding schools. I never grew up with the person."

Yet Yeslam Binladin became the most prominent relative of the world’s most wanted man in recent years.

Investigators in Switzerland and France have probed a potential financial trail from his Geneva-based Saudi Investment Company (SICO) to the terror chief.

In February, Swiss authorities handed back documents seized at Binladin’s home and offices over three years ago, saying that "detailed" investigations into the businessman had revealed no illegal activities.

"I had two searches, eight checks of all kinds, so it has been troublesome. After nine-eleven, everyone was pointing fingers," he added.

"We felt that people didn’t want to deal with us, we felt it strongly," he said, explaining that his investment business had suffered in the wake of the deadly attacks his half-brother had guided.

The softly spoken 54 year-old shrugged off suggestions of resentment, saying he "understood" the reaction.

"It was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe for us too."

"I think it’s only natural when people point a finger at you, that people become cautious," he said, pausing repeatedly to respond to greetings from passing friends.

"The only thing that’s not natural is that some papers jump to conclusions," he complained.

At one point, 40 police crammed into his offices during an unannounced search. But two years later Binladin was invited to speak about Islam and the West to an audience of Swiss federal police officers.

The businessman, who became a Swiss citizen in May 2001, left Saudi Arabia about 20 years ago, severing ties with the huge Bin Laden construction group his father built up over decades.

"There was family bickering and I left-bickering in the company," he explained.

Despite insisting that SICO, which invests his closest family’s fortune, kept an "arms-length relationship" with the late patriarch’s business, Binladin is proud of his father’s achievement.

"My father built the mosque in Mecca and the mosque in Medina. It was the biggest construction company."