Jet set’s notorious ‘Mr Fixit’ of the global arms trade
1935 - 2017
ARMS dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who has died at the age of 81, was known for his high-rolling international lifestyle and many brushes with scandal.
At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the 1970s and ’80s, the Saudi-born “Mr Fixit” made hundreds of millions of dollars brokering vast arms deals for the Saudi royal family. He was billed as one of the richest men in the world, his wealth once estimated at $3-billion (about R39-billion).
His assets included 12 homes, fully staffed at all times, including a 4 000ha ranch in Kenya, an estate in Marbella and houses in London, Paris, Cannes, Madrid, Monte Carlo and Manhattan. He had a stable of Arabian horses and 200 exotic animals, 100 limousines, a personal airline of three jets and a fleet of three yachts, including the $75-million Nabila (named after his daughter), which was used in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. Other assets included a South Korean bodyguard called Mr Kill.
The gossip columns chronicled Khashoggi’s jet-set lifestyle, with tales of costume balls in lavish villas in Switzerland and on the Riviera, and impossible sums staked at gaming tables. For his 50th birthday he threw a five-day bash at his estate in Marbella, at which he was serenaded by Shirley Bassey, danced with Brooke Shields and basked in a public encomium delivered by Sean Connery. A roll call of glamorous companions included, in addition to his three spouses, a series of “pleasure wives”.
Khashoggi’s name seemed to crop up whenever there was a whiff of political scandal involving arms contracts — including the £20-billion (R328-billion) al-Yamamah defence contract negotiated in the 1980s between the British government of Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Arabia. In 1994 there were allegations of bribery and claims that Thatcher’s son Mark had benefited financially from the deals, which he denied.
Khashoggi was born on July 25 1935 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, one of 14 sons of Muhammad Khashoggi, a doctor who was King Abdel Aziz Al Saud’s personal physician. A sister, Samira, would marry the Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana’s companion at the time of her death. Another sister is the novelist Soheir Khashoggi.
Adnan’s father sent his son to be educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, and then to the US, where he studied at Ohio State University and Stanford University in California. He left Stanford early to go into business in Saudi Arabia and launched his career as a truck salesman, putting together deals between US companies and Saudi royals.
As the royal family began to spend their oil riches on defence equipment in the 1960s and ’70s, it was to Khashoggi that they turned. By the mid-’70s he was pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year and acting as a middleman for US companies such as Lockheed and Boeing.
Money was funnelled to Saudi princes and officials, though Khashoggi always kept a generous share for himself.
His role as a fixer apparently went well beyond pure business. In 1989, Pamella Bordes, the highclass British call girl who had a House of Commons pass, claimed she had been hired by Khashoggi to provide sexual favours for business and political clients.
In the late ’60s, Khashoggi became close to Richard Nixon, attending his inaugurals and contributing money to his campaigns. In 1973, he served as an intermediary between the White VIEW TO A KILL: Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi in his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City in 1990. At one point he had 12 homes, from Kenya to Cannes House and King Faisal during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In 1961, Khashoggi married Soraya, a raven-haired beauty who had grown up in a Leicester council house as Sandra Daly, and whom he met when she accompanied her mother on a trip to Paris. The Khashoggis had a daughter and four sons, but the marriage ended in 1974, and Soraya sued her husband for half his fortune. The action was settled out of court in 1982, with estimates of her entitlement varying between £5-million and £20-million — although by 1995 Soraya was living in a rented terraced house in Hungerford, Berkshire.
By the time of his divorce, Khashoggi’s fabulous wealth was beginning to attract the attention of the US authorities. During the Lockheed bribery scandal of 197576, it was revealed that board members of the US aerospace firm had paid members of friendly governments to guarantee contracts for military aircraft, and Khashoggi was named as one of the principal beneficiaries.
In 1990, a US jury acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud.
Khashoggi was alleged to have helped the Marcoses plunder the Philippines of some $160-million.
As plunging oil prices added to the toll, Khashoggi made things worse for himself by losing heavily on the gaming tables. There were whispered stories of how he was draining money from his own projects to maintain his gambling addiction, of unpaid servants and unpaid bills.
He continued to be a popular guest at glitzy parties. In later life, however, he lived quietly in Monaco. After his divorce from Soraya, Khashoggi married an Italian beauty called Laura Biancolini, who renamed herself Lamia; they had a son. In 1991, he took an Iranian second wife, Shahpari Zanganeh, with whom he had a son and a daughter; that marriage was dissolved. He is survived by Lamia and eight children. — © The Daily Telegraph, London
There were whispers of his gambling addiction, of unpaid servants and unpaid bills