Adnan Khashoggi is a Saudi businessman. In the early 80s, when his fortune reached its peak and amounted to 4 billion dollars, he was considered one of the richest people in the world.
Family and education
Khashoggi was born July 25, 1935 in Mecca, in the family of Muhammad Khashoggi, the personal doctor of King Abdul Aziz Al Sauds. The family had two more daughters, Samira Khashoggi, the wife of businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and mother Dodi al-Fayed, the other sister, Sofira Khashoggi, is a famous Arab writer.
Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, and then enrolled at Chico University in Ohio. But at some point, Adnan realized that his calling was a business and dropped out of school.
Business career
Khashoggi’s childhood and youth were surrounded by the most influential figures in Saudi Arabia. While studying 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 intermediary business. He brought together a Libyan classmate, whose father wanted to import towels with an Egyptian classmate, whose father was engaged in the production of towels, and received $ 1, 000 for his services.
One of his first major transactions was the leasing of a construction company to Kenworth trucks for use. on the quicksand of the desert. As a result of this transaction, Khashoggi earned US $ 250, 000 and became a Kenwort agent in Saudi Arabia.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Khashogi acted as an intermediary between Western business and the Saudi government to meet the needs of the young kingdom in developing infrastructure and building defense capabilities. Between 1970 and 1975, only one Lockheed company paid him $ 106 million. His commission at the beginning of his career was 2.5%, and ultimately rose to 15%.
He founded several intermediary companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, his clients were major corporations and famous people. His yacht, Nabilla, was the largest in the world at that time and was used in one of the films "Bond" - "Never Say Never." after Khashoggi was faced with 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-Walid bin Talal in order 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 of Genesis Intermedia, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ), 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 does not recognize, but does not deny these allegations.
In January 2003, Seymour Hersh told The New Yorker magazine that former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Pearl had a meeting with Khashoggi in Marseilles to use as an intermediary.
"Khashogi told Hersh that Perle was talking to him about the economic costs associated with the alleged invasion of Iraq -" If there is no war, "he told me, " why do we need security? If there is a war, of course, you will have to spend billions of dollars."
