Adnan Khashoggi

Adnan Khashoggi (or Kashoggi) ( _ar. عدنان خاشقجي) (born 25 July 1935 in Mecca) is a former billionaire 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, BCCI and numerous other affairs.

History

Adnan Khashoggi is the son of Muhammad Khashoggi, a Turkish-born medical doctor who was King Abdel Aziz Al Saud's personal Physician. The family name means "spoonmaker" in Turkish. Adnan Khashoggi's sister Samira Khashoggi Fayed was the mother of Dodi Fayed, who died with Princess Diana.

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.

Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Centre 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 deal 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 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 with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, and 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. [cite web
url = http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/25/74621.shtml
title = Marcos Juror Among Stewart Jury Finalists
accessdate = 2007-09-11
date = 2004-01-25] He has also worked for Col. Ghaddafi of Libya in 1992 as a mediator.

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. [ [http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2007/34-55527.pdf In the Matter of Dean C. Reder] , "Securities and Exchange Commission", March 26, 2007.] [Mudry, Brent. [http://www.rgm.com/articles/sec.html "SEC files first suit in GenesisIntermedia debacle"] , "Canada StockWatch", June 4, 2003.] 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. [ [http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001136/000095013701504720/c66026ntnt10-q.txt Form 12B-25, Notification of Late Filing] , "Securities and Exchange Commission", November 14, 2001.] [SIPC. [http://www.sipc.org/media/release10oct.cfm "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.] Native Nations Securities and MJK Clearing both eventually filed for bankruptcy. [ [http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Fex0XbkK1_MJ:www.mjktrustee.com/pdf/trustee20threport.pdf+Native+Nations+Securities&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us SIPC vs. MJK Clearing, Inc.] , "United States Bankruptcy Court, District of Minnesota', September 30, 2006.']

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 with Richard Perle shortly before the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003.

Kashoggi has also worked with the Bangladeshi Arms Dealer and the Billionaire Prince Moosa Shamser to broker deals in Russia. Prince Moosa Shamser currently lives a lavish but low profile life in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. Some reports claim that Prince Moosa is also involved in the Al-Yamama BAE scandal.

Personal life

Khashoggi was well known for leading an extravagant and wild lifestyle that was legendary in its time. This was commemorated on rock band Queen's album "The Miracle", on which the second song is titled "Khashoggi's Ship". The song mentions his super yacht "Nabila" (named after his daughter actress Nabila Khashoggi [http://posters.imdb.com/name/nm0451490/bio] ), built by Benetti and appearing in the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again". The yacht was later acquired by Donald Trump who renamed it "Trump Princess" for Ivana Trump. After Donald Trump's divorce, the yacht was repossessed and then sold by an American Express subsidiary bank to another Saudi Businessman, Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the king of Saudi Arabia. It is now kept at berth number one in Antibes with an occasional cruise to Cannes, in the south of France under the new name of "Kingdom 5KR".

In addition to the yacht, he also had an opulent DC-8 jet with futuristic custom interior built around 1980. It is featured in the last issue of Nest Magazine.

At his 50th birthday party, held in Marbella, Spain in 1985, said to have cost millions of dollars, he entertained celebrity guests such as Sean Connery, Shirley Bassey, porn star Olinka Hardiman, Brooke Shields, Michael Caine, and George Hamilton IV.

Khashoggi has 5 children with ex-wife Soraya, these are Nabila, Muhammed, Khalid, Hussein, and Omar. He has one grandson, Spartan Daggenhurst, whose parents are Nabila Khashoggi and Athanasios Richard Daggenhurst, a Greek-German. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Divorce from Soraya

In divorcing his wife, Soraya, in 1980, Khashoggi agreed to one of the largest divorce settlements on record; one figure was quoted at £548.4m, [http://www.virgin.net/money/features/mostexpensivedivorces/gal_01_03.html] but reports vary wildly and part of the value of the settlement was said to have been tied to oil prices.

It later emerged that one of his daughters (Petrina Khashoggi) with ex-wife Soraya turned out, on DNA testing at age 18, to be the daughter of UK Tory Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, soon to be disgraced for his role in accepting a gift from another arms dealer, Mohammed Said Ayas, a Lebanese and a close associate of Prince Muhammad bin Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In his libel suit against the "Guardian" newspaper, Aitken perjured himself over this gift of accommodation at the Paris Ritz and went to jail.

Association with Heather Mills

In 2006, Khashoggi was named in the News of the World as a client of Heather Mills when she allegedly worked as an escort. As corroboration, "News of the World" provided an affidavit from escort Denise Hewitt, who said she worked with Mills in the service of "Saudi royalty" (not naming Khashoggi specifically), and that Mills boasted of services rendered to afluent clients earning up to £10,000 in a single night.cite web |first=Matt |last=Born |url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-390174/Heather-high-class-hooker-paid-thousands.html |title='Heather was a high-class hooker paid thousands' |publisher=The Daily Mail |date=2006-06-12 |accessdate=2008-07-15] "News of the World" also produced a man named Abdul Khoury, who stated he was Khashoggi's personal secretary from 1977 to 2005 and had day-to-day knowledge of Khashoggi's business dealings and personal affairs. Khoury affirmed the veracity of reports of Mills's providing erotic services to Khashoggi, and in unequivocal detail. The "Daily Mail" further produced accounts of other friends of Mills's affirming that she had worked as an escort on other occasions.cite web |first=Laura |last=Collins |url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-390135/Heather-just-stood-naked-unashamed-unabashed.html |title=Heather just stood there, naked, unashamed and unabashed |publisher=The Daily Mail |date=2008-04-12 |accessdate=2008-07-15]

These accusations have never been tested in a court of law; nor have Khashoggi or Mills (as of early 2007) initiated libel proceedings against Khoury, the News of the World or any media outlets carrying the story (despite the relatively favorable legal climate that exists in the UK for doing so). Through her lawyers, Mills has denied ever having been a sex worker, says the accusations come from unreliable persons and are timed to cause maximum hurt, and has expressed her intention to sue as soon as her divorce is concluded.cite web |first= |last= |url=http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/06/13/mills-mccartney-tabloids.html |title=Mills McCartney to sue over 'defamatory' allegations |publisher=CBC |date=2006-06-13 |accessdate=2008-07-15]

In Popular Culture

* "Khashoggi's Ship", a song on the 1989 Album The Miracle by rock band Queen is about Adnan Khashoggi and a ship (the Nabila, now Kingdom 5KR) that he owned at the time.
*The Swedish dance music band Army of Lovers has referenced Khashoggi in two songs. In "La Plage De Saint Tropez" with the line: "We meet Khashoggi with a gun", and in "I am" with the lines: "I am, what Bobby is to Pam, Khashoggi to Iran, I am".
*Harold Robbins´novel "The Pirate" (1974) is supposed to be inspired by the life and lifestyle of Khashoggi
*As well, Khashoggi is the name of one of the antagonist characters in the musical based on Queen's works, "We Will Rock You".

See also

*Hasan Ali Khan
*Ghaith Pharaon
*Ahmed Zaki Yamani
* Ronald Kessler, The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Kashoggi, New York: Warner Books, 1986.
*Larry J. Kolb, who tells of his experience working closely with Khashoggi in his book "Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy" (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004)

References

External links

* [http://www.ramyelbatrawi.com Ramy El-Batrawi]
* [http://www.rediff.com/news/dec/02vir.htm Rajiv Gandhi Murder Controversy]
* [http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101870119,00.html TIME Magazine Cover: Adnan Khashoggi Jan. 19, 1987]
* [http://www.ciajfk.com/KASH-.html Notes on The Richest Man In The World] by Ronald Kessler ISBN 0-446-51339-3
* [http://www.nndb.com/people/321/000024249 Profile at NNDB]
* [http://www.time.com/time/reports/diana/fayeds.html Death of a Princess]
* [http://www.geocities.com/saudhouse_p/servants1.htm Chapter Servants of the Crown] from Saïd K. Aburish's The House of Saud ISBN 0-7475-7874-5
* [http://www.slate.com/id/1006609/ Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/1007141/ More "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi"]
* [http://www.rgm.com/articles/Deutsche.html TSX member Deutsche Bank in major penny stock scandal] article by Brent Mudry
* [http://www.rgm.com/articles/Deutsche2.html Banking units embroiled in lawsuit] copy of a Globe and Mail article by Karen Howlett
* [http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/030317fa_fact Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?] The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, March 2003.
* [http://www.oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/3588547/ Adnan Khashoggi, Rakesh Saxena and the Spiderweb]