Adnan Khashoggi
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Adnan Khashoggi (Arabic: عدنان خاشقجي) (born 25 July 1935 in Mecca) is a billionaire Turkish-Saudi Arabian arms-dealer and businessman. He is also noted for his engagements with high society in both the Occidental and Arabic-speaking worlds, and for his involvement in the Iran–Contra and Lockheed bribery scandals, and numerous other affairs.
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[edit] Biography
Khashoggi is the son of Muhammad Khashoggi, a medical doctor of Spanish, Basque and Turkish ancestry who was King Abdel Aziz Al Saud's personal physician. The family name means spoonmaker (Kaşıkçı) in Turkish. The family moved from the Iberian Peninsula and settled in Saudi Arabia. Adnan Khashoggi's sister Samira Khashoggi Fayed was the mother of Dodi Fayed.
Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, California State University, Chico, Ohio State University, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA. It is said that Khashoggi quit his studies in order to seek his fortune in business.
[edit] Business career
Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, 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 The Mayfair Set, Saudi author Said Aburish states that one of Adnan'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 (which have now merged into Northrop Grumman). A shrewd businessman, he covered his financial tracks by establishing front 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 US businessman Bebe Rebozo, a close associate of former US President Richard Nixon. He was also involved in diamond mining in the Central African Empire, working closely with the dictator Bokassa. He was considered the richest man in the world in the 1980s. His sister married Mohammed Al-Fayed father of Dodi Fayed. 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.
[edit] Iran–Contra affair
He 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 now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, held for three months and then extradited to the United States where he was released on bail and subsequently acquitted. 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.[1] He has also worked for Col. Ghaddafi of Libya in 1992 as a mediator.
[edit] GenesisIntermedia insolvency
Khashoggi, along with Ramy El-Batrawi, was the principal financier behind GenesisIntermedia, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ: GENI), a publicly traded Internet company based in Southern California. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khashoggi's U.S.-based checking accounts were frozen and Khashoggi was unable to make a margin call with Native Nations Securities, whose CEO and largest shareholder, at the time, was Valerie Red Horse, former office manager of junk bond king Michael Milken. In turn, Native Nations and Red Horse were unable to meet their obligations on the margin loan to MJK Clearing, Inc.[2][3] Trading in the stock of GenesisIntermedia was halted in September 2001. Khashoggi's unwillingness to pay his margin loan to Native Nations Securities, and Native Nations (and Red Horse's) inability to pay its debts to MJK Clearing, began a series of bankruptcies that ended in the largest payout in Securities Investor Protection Corporation history.[4][5] Native Nations Securities and MJK Clearing both eventually filed for bankruptcy.[6]
[edit] Personal life
In the 1960s he married 20-year old Englishwoman Sandra Daly who took the name Soraya. [1] Two daughters were born to the Khashoggis who are socialites Petrina and her younger sister Octavia.
American University used to have a prominent building named the Khashoggi Center but after he defaulted on his donation pledge, the school removed his name from the building.
Khashoggi continues to live a quiet life in the Principality of Monaco, even after a British court ordered him to pay a creditor the amount of £7 million. His services as a facilitator have been a recurring feature throughout US administrations since Nixon; most recently, he met Richard Perle shortly before the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003.
In divorcing his wife, Soraya, in 1980, Khashoggi agreed to one of the largest divorce settlements on record. Estimates go as high as £548.4m.[7]
In 1999 it was confirmed by DNA testing that his daughter Petrina Khashoggi, was in fact biologically not his, but Jonathan Aitken's and Soraya's child. [2] Aitken was soon afterwards jailed [3] for perjury and perverting the course of justice after investigation of his role in accepting gifts from Lebanese arms dealer, Mohammed Said Ayas.
An interesting fact about Khashoggi, was that Queen, a famous british rock group, wrote a song called "Khashoggi's Ship" on their 1989 album, The Miracle.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Marcos Juror Among Stewart Jury Finalists". 2004-01-25. http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/25/74621.shtml. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
- ^ In the Matter of Dean C. Reder, Securities and Exchange Commission, March 26, 2007.
- ^ Mudry, Brent. "SEC files first suit in GenesisIntermedia debacle", Canada StockWatch, June 4, 2003.
- ^ Form 12B-25, Notification of Late Filing, Securities and Exchange Commission, November 14, 2001.
- ^ SIPC. "SIPC: BANKRUPTCY COURT CLEARS SALE OF TROUBLED MINNESOTA BROKERAGE FIRM, 175,000-Customer Firm Failure is Largest Ever Handled by SIPC", SIPC, October 2, 2001.
- ^ SIPC vs. MJK Clearing, Inc., United States Bankruptcy Court, District of Minnesota', September 30, 2006.'
- ^ http://www.virgin.net/money/features/mostexpensivedivorces/gal_01_03.html
[edit] External links
- Michael Slackman, An Arms Dealer Returns, Now Selling an Image, New York Times, 14 November 2009
- Ramy El-Batrawi
- Rajiv Gandhi Murder Controversy
- TIME Magazine Cover: Adnan Khashoggi 19 January 1987
- Notes on The Richest Man In The World by Ronald Kessler ISBN 0-446-51339-3.
- Profile at NNDB
- Death of a Princess
- Chapter Servants of the Crown (Archived 2009-10-24) from Saïd K. Aburish's The House of Saud ISBN 0-7475-7874-5.
- Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?
- More "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi"
- TSX member Deutsche Bank in major penny stock scandal article by Brent Mudry.
- Banking units embroiled in lawsuit copy of a Globe and Mail article by Karen Howlett.
- Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi? The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, March 2003.
