Billionaires who get too big for their boots

Adnan Khashoggi
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Adnan Khashoggi (or Kashoggi) (Arabic:عدنان خاشقجي)(born 25 July 1935) is a billionaire Saudi arms-dealer and businessman, and was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Contents
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* 1 History
* 2 Trivia
* 3 See also
* 4 External links

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History

Kashoggi is the son of Muhammad Khashoggi a medical doctor, and was educated in Victoria College in Alexandria in Egypt, California State University, Chico, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA. He is Turkish by descent.

It is said that Kashoggi quit his studies in order to seek his fortune in business. Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which amongst 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. 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 (bribes) as well as developing contacts with notables such as CIA agents James H. Critchfield and Kim Roosevelt and US businessman Bebe Rebozo, a close associate of former US President Richard Nixon.

Among Kashoggi's activities reported in the news was a reported $1 billion 1980 divorce settlement paid to his ex-wife Soraya. He was also 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 near-infamous and now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Kashoggi 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. Since then he has kept a low profile, last resurfacing in 1992 to mediate for Col. Ghaddafi of Libya his investment in the United Kingdom Metropole Hotels.
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Trivia

* 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" built by Benetti

* Army of lovers band featured Khashoggi in its song La Plage De Saint Tropez with the following line: "We met Khashoggi with a gun".

* Harold Robbins´novel The Pirate (1974) is supposed to be inspired by the life and lifestyle of Khashoggi.

* Khashoggi's sister, Samira Khashoggi Fayed was the mother of Dodi Al-Fayed, friend of the late Princess Diana

* In his 50th birthday party, held in Marbella in Spain in 1985, said to have cost millions of dollars, he entertained celebrity guests such as Sean Connery, Shirley Bassey, Brooke Shields and George Hamilton IV.

* American University used to have a prominent building named the Khashoggi Center but after defaulting on his donation obligation, the school removed his name from the building.

* One of "his" daughters with ex-wife Soraya Khashoggi, 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.

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See also

* Ghaith Pharoan
* Ahmed Zaki Yamani
* Ramy El-Batrawi

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External links

* TIME Magazine Cover: Adnan Khashoggi Jan. 19, 1987
* Notes on The Richest Man In The World by Ronald Kessler ISBN 0446513393
* Profile at NNDB
* Death of a Princess
* Chapter Servants of the Crown from Saïd K. Aburish's The House of Saud ISBN 0747578745
* 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.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi"

Categories: 1935 births | American political scandals | Arms traders | Living people | Saudi Arabian businesspeople


Taken from: Adnan Kashoggi - Wikipedia









Malcolm Forbes
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Malcolm Stevenson Forbes (August 19, 1919 – February 24, 1990) was publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B.C. Forbes and today run by his son Steve Forbes. He is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School and Princeton University.
Contents
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* 1 Career
* 2 Fabergé
* 3 Trivia
* 4 See also

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Career

After dabbling in politics, including a term in the state legislature and candidacy for Governor of New Jersey, he committed to the magazine full time by 1957, three years after his father's death, and after the death of elder brother Bruce Charles Forbes in 1964 acquired sole control of the company.

The magazine grew steadily under his leadership, and he diversified into real estate sales and other ventures. One of his last projects was the magazine Egg, which chronicled New York's nightlife. (The title had nothing to do with Forbes's famous Fabergé egg collection.)

Malcolm Forbes was legendary for his lavish lifestyle, his private Capitalist Tool jet, ever larger Highlander yachts, huge art collection, substantial collection of Harley-Davidson motorbikes, his French Chateau (in Balleroy, Normandy), collection of special shape Hot air balloons and opulent birthday parties.

He chose the Palais du Mendoub (which he had acquired from the Moroccan government in 1970) in the northwestern city of Tangier, Morocco to host his 70th birthday party. Spending an estimated $2.5 million, he chartered a Boeing 747, a DC-8 and a Concorde to fly in eight hundred of the world's rich and famous from New York and London. The guests include his friend Elizabeth Taylor (who acted as a co-host), Gianni Agnelli, Robert Maxwell, Barbara Walters, Henry Kissinger, half a dozen US state governors, the CEOs of scores of multinational corporations likely to advertise in his magazine. The party entertainment was on a grand scale, including 600 drummers, acrobats and dancers and a fantasia - a cavalry charge which ends with the firing of muskets into the air - by 300 Berber horsemen.

Forbes was outed as a gay man in the late 1980s by the gay political group, ACT-UP. He died suddenly in 1990. The exact nature of his death is unsure.
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Fabergé

The nine Fabergé eggs he acquired were scheduled to be auctioned in April 2004 by Sotheby's, with a pre-sale estimate that they would sell for an average of US$10 million apiece. However, Russian oil magnate and art collector Victor Vekselberg made a deal in February to buy the entire collection for $100 million.
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Trivia

* Malcolm Forbes became a motorcyclist late in life. He rode with a motorcycle club called the Capitalist Tools. His estate in New Jersey was a regular meeting place for tours that he organized for fellow New Jersey and New York motorcyclists. He had a stable of motorcycles but was partial to Harley Davidson machines. He was known for his gift of Purple Passion, a Harley-Davidson, to actress Elizabeth Taylor. He was also instrumental in getting legislation passed to allow motorcycles on the cars-only Garden State Parkway in New Jersey.

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See also

* Forbes family (publishers)


Taken from: Malcolm Forbes - wikipedia