Adnan Khashoggi

Adnan Khashoggi
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Native name	عدنان خاشقجي
Born	(1935-07-25)25 July 1935 Mecca, Saudi Arabia
Died	London, England
Nationality	Saudi Arabia
Occupation	International businessman
Spouse(s)	Soraya Khashoggi (m. 1961; div. 1979) Shahpari Azam Zanganeh (m. 1991–2014) Lamia Khashoggi (m. 1979)
Children	8, including Nabila Khashoggi
Parent(s)	Mohammad Khashoggi Samiha Ahmed
Relatives	Samira Khashoggi (sister) Soheir Khashoggi (sister) Dodi Fayed (nephew) Jamal Khashoggi (nephew)

Adnan Khashoggi (Arabic: عدنان خاشقجي‎‎; 25 July 1935 – 6 June 2017) was a Saudi Arabian businessman and arms dealer, known for his lavish business deals and lifestyle. He is estimated to have had a peak net worth of around US$4 billion in the early 1980s.

Family and education

Khashoggi was born in Mecca, the son of Mohammad Khashoggi, who was King Abdul Aziz Al Saud's personal doctor. His family is of Turkish origin. Adnan Khashoggi's sister was author Samira Khashoggi who married businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed. Another sister, Soheir Khashoggi, is a well-known Arab writer (Mirage, Nadia's Song, Mosaic). He was an uncle of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, and the American universities California State University, Chico, Ohio State, and Stanford. Khashoggi left his studies in order to seek his fortune in business.

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Khashoggi's super-yacht The Nabila, later sold to Donald Trump

Business career

Khashoggi's early years were spent among some of Saudi Arabia's most influential figures. "While attending school he met Hussein bin Talal, the future King of Jordan. It was at school that Khashoggi first learned the commercial value of facilitating a deal, bringing together a Libyan classmate whose father wanted to import towels with an Egyptian classmate whose father manufactured towels, earning US$1,000 for the introduction. Khashoggi's subsequent education at university would serve as a launchpad for his commercial career."

In one of his first big deals, a large construction company was experiencing difficulties with the trucks that it used on the shifting desert sands. Khashoggi, using money given to him by his father for a car, bought a number of Kenworth trucks, whose wide wheels made traversing the desert considerably easier. Khashoggi made his first US$250,000 leasing the trucks to the construction company, and became the Saudi Arabia-based agent for Kenworth.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Khashoggi helped bring together Western companies and the Saudi Arabian Government to satisfy the needs of the young Kingdom for its infrastructure and defense needs. Between 1970 and 1975, Lockheed paid Khashoggi $106 million in commissions. His commissions started at 2.5% and eventually rose to as much as 15%. Khashoggi "became for all practical purposes a marketing arm of Lockheed. Khashoggi would provide not only an entrée but strategy, constant advice, and analysis", according to Max Helzel, then vice president of Lockheed's international marketing.

A commercial pioneer, he established companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to handle his commissions as well as developing contacts with notables such as CIA officers James H. Critchfield and Kim Roosevelt and United States businessman Bebe Rebozo, a close associate of U.S. President Richard Nixon. His yacht, the Nabila, was the largest in the world at the time and was used in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. After Khashoggi ran into financial problems he sold the yacht to the Sultan of Brunei, who in turn sold it for $29 million to Donald Trump, who sold it for $20 million to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal as part of a deal to keep his Taj Mahal casino out of bankruptcy.

Khashoggi headed a company called Triad International Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Center in Salt Lake City, which later went bankrupt. He was famed as an arms dealer, brokering deals between US firms and the Saudi government, most actively in the 1960s and 1970s. In the documentary series The Mayfair Set, Saudi author Said Aburish states that one of Khashoggi's first weapons deals was providing David Stirling with weapons for a covert mission in Yemen during the Aden Emergency in 1963. Among his overseas clients were defense contractors Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin Corporation), Raytheon, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and Northrop Corporation (the last two of which have now merged into Northrop Grumman).

Iran–Contra affair

Khashoggi was implicated in the Iran–Contra affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and, in a complex series of events, was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchases from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with Saudi and United States backing. His role in the affair created a related controversy when Khashoggi donated millions to the American University in Washington, DC to build a sports arena which would bear his name. Khashoggi was a member of the university's board of trustees from 1983 until his indictment on fraud and other charges in May 1989.

Imelda Marcos affair

In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, and held for three months. Khashoggi stopped fighting extradition when the U.S. prosecutors reduced the charges to obstruction of justice and mail fraud and dropped the more serious charges of racketeering and conspiracy. In 1990, a United States federal jury in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud.

After Dark

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Appearing on After Dark in 1991

In 1991 Khashoggi appeared on the Channel 4 live discussion programme After Dark, alongside among others Edward Heath and Lord Weidenfeld.

Genesis Intermedia

Khashoggi was a financier behind Genesis Intermedia, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ: GENI), a publicly traded Internet company based in the US. In 2006, Khashoggi was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for securities fraud. The case was settled in 2008 and Khashoggi did not admit or deny the allegations.

Seymour Hersh report

In January 2003, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker magazine that former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle had a meeting with Khashoggi in Marseille in order to use him as a conduit between Trireme Partners, a private venture capital company of which he was one of three principals, and the Saudi government. At the time, Perle was chair of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a Defense Department advisory group, which provided him with access to classified information and a position to influence defense policy.

Khashoggi told Hersh that Perle talked to him about the economic costs regarding a proposed invasion of Iraq. "'If there is no war,' he told me, 'why is there a need for security? If there is a war, of course, billions of dollars will have to be spent.'"

Personal life

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Khashoggi and wife Lamia

In the 1960s, Khashoggi married 20-year-old Englishwoman Sandra Daly who converted to Islam and took the name Soraya Khashoggi. They raised one daughter (Nabila, who attended Millfield) and four sons together (Mohammed, Khalid, Hussein, and Omar). Another daughter, Petrina, was born after the couple divorced in 1974 but assumed to be Adnan's, until a DNA test in 1999 revealed that her father was Conservative party politician Jonathan Aitken.

His second wife, the Italian Laura Biancolini, also converted to Islam and changed her name to Lamia Khashoggi. She was seventeen when she met Adnan; together they had a son, Ali.

In the 1980s, the Khashoggi family occupied one of the largest villa estates in Marbella, Spain, called Baraka, hosting lavish parties. Guests at these parties included film stars, pop celebrities and politicians. In 1985, celebrity reporter Robin Leach reported Khashoggi threw a five-day birthday party in Vienna for his eldest son, and in his heyday, Khashoggi spent $250,000 a day to maintain his lifestyle.He continued to spend lavishly even when he encountered financial problems. His net worth was said to have been down to about 8 million in 1990.

Khashoggi also owned Ol Pejeta Conservancy, in Laikipia County, Kenya. His house has since been converted into a hotel which is run by Serena Hotels.

Khashoggi died on 6 June 2017 while being treated for Parkinson's disease at the Harley Street Clinic in London. He was 81.

In popular culture

Films

• Where I Stand: The Hank Greenspun Story
• The One Percent

Books

• The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi
• The One-Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page ISBN 9780062084125
• The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade

Music

• "Khashoggi's Ship", a song by Queen from the album The Miracle (1989)
• "I am", a song by Army of Lovers, contains the lyrics "What Bobby is to Pam, Khashoggi to Iran, I am" (1993)
• "La Plage de Saint-Tropez", a song by Army of Lovers (1993)

Also see

• Bob Shaheen

Further reading

• Kessler, Ronald. The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi, Warner Books, New York, 1986
• Mackey, Sandra. The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom. Updated Edition. Norton Paperback. W. W. Norton and Company, New York. 2002 (first edition: 1987). ISBN 0-393-32417-6