Adnan Khashoggi is a Saudi businessman. In the early 80s, when his fortune peaked at $ 4 billion, he was considered one of the richest people in the world.
Family and education
Khashoggi was born on July 25, 1935 in Mecca, in the family of Muhammad Khashoggi, the personal physician of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud. The family had two more daughters, Samira Khashoggi, the wife of businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and mother of Dodi al-Fayed, another sister, Sofira Khashoggi, is a famous Arab writer.
Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, and then entered the American University of Chico in Ohio. But at some point, Adnan realized that his calling was a business and dropped out.
Business career
Khashoggi spent his childhood and adolescence surrounded by the most influential figures in Saudi Arabia. While at school, he became friends with Hussein bin Talal, the future king of Jordan. It was at school that Adnan first learned the commercial value of the intermediary business. He brought together a Libyan classmate whose father wanted to import towels with an Egyptian classmate whose father was a towel maker and received $ 1,000 for his services.
One of his first major deals was leasing a Kenworth truck to a construction company for use. on the quicksands of the desert. As a result of this deal, Khashoggi earned US $ 250,000 and became Kenwort's agent in Saudi Arabia.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Khashogi acted as an intermediary between Western business circles and the government of Saudi Arabia to meet the needs of the young kingdom for infrastructure development and strengthening of defense capabilities. Between 1970 and 1975, Lockheed alone paid him $ 106 million. His commissions were 2.5% early in his career and eventually rose to 15%.
He founded several intermediary companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, his clients were the largest corporations and famous people. His yacht, Nabila, was the largest in the world at the time and was featured in one of the Bond films, Never Say Never. after Khashoggi faced 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 Alwaleed bin Talal to save the Taj Mahal casino from bankruptcy.
In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland on charges of concealing income, but was able to avoid extradition. In 1990, in the United States, a federal court in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi.
Khashogi was a financier for Genesis Intermedia, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ Index), a publicly traded Internet company based in the United States. In 2006, Khashoggi was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud. The case was settled in 2008 and Khashoggi neither admits nor denies these allegations.
In January 2003, Seymour Hersh told The New Yorker magazine that former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Pearl had met with Khashoggi in Marseilles to use him as an intermediary.
“Khashogi told Hersh that Perle had spoken to him about the economic costs of the proposed invasion of Iraq.“If there’s no war,”he told me,“why do we need security?” If there is a war, of course, billions of dollars will have to be spent."
Personal life
In the 1960s, Khashoggi married 20-year-old Englishwoman Sandra Daly, who converted to Islam and took the name Soraya Khashoggi. Together they raised one daughter (Nabila) and four sons (Mohammed Khalid Hussein, and Omar). Another daughter, Petrina, was born after the couple divorced in 1974.
His second wife, Italian Laura Biancolini, also converted to Islam and changed her name to Lamia Khashoggi. She was only seventeen years old when she met Adnan. In this marriage, Khashoggi's son Ali was born.
Khashoggi died on June 6, 2017 at the Harley Street Clinic in London. He was 81 years old.
