Adnan Khashoggi

Adnan Khashoggi (1935–2017) was a Saudi businessman and arms dealer whose career, political connections, and extravagant spending made him a global celebrity. At his height in the early 1980s, he was worth roughly $4 billion, earned largely by acting as a middleman between Western defense contractors and the Saudi government. He founded Triad International Holding Company, a firm with investments in luxury hotels, oil refineries, and real estate. His lavish parties—attended by movie stars, pop musicians, and politicians—made him a fixture in the media and inspired references in popular culture, including songs by Queen and appearances on *Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous*.

Born in Mecca, Khashoggi was the son of Muhammad Khashoggi, an ethnic Turk who served as King Abdul Aziz Al Saud’s personal doctor, and Samiha Ahmed, a Saudi woman of Syrian origin. His sister Samira Khashoggi was an author who married businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed. Another sister, Soheir Khashoggi, became a well-known Arab novelist. He had two brothers, Essam and Adil, and named his company Triad after the three of them. He was also the paternal uncle of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, he attended Chico State, Ohio State, and Stanford University before leaving school to start his business career.

In 1961, he married Sandra Daly, a 20-year-old Englishwoman who converted to Islam and took the name Soraya Khashoggi. They had one daughter, Nabila, and four sons: Mohamed, Khalid, Hussein, and Omar. After their divorce in 1974, another daughter, Petrina, was born; a 1999 DNA test later showed her father was Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken. In 1978, he married Italian Laura Biancolini, then 17, who changed her name to Lamia Khashoggi; they had a son. His third legal wife was Shahpari Azam Zanganeh. Beyond these marriages, Khashoggi kept a harem of at least 12 women described as “pleasure wives,” including former model Jill Dodd, who wrote a memoir about their relationship.

During the 1980s, the family lived in Baraka, one of the largest villa estates in Marbella, Spain, where they hosted parties with guests like film stars, pop celebrities, and former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. In 1985, reporter Robin Leach covered a five-day birthday party Khashoggi threw in Vienna for his eldest son. At his peak, he spent $250,000 a day to maintain his lifestyle, earning him the nickname “the Great Gatsby of the Middle East.” Another home was Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, then called the Mount Kenya Safari Club; the house later became a hotel run by Serena Hotels. Even when his finances faltered—his net worth reportedly fell to about $8 million in 1990—he continued spending lavishly. He died on 6 June 2017 at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, while being treated for Parkinson’s disease. He was 81.

Khashoggi’s early years put him among Saudi Arabia’s influential figures. At school he met Hussein bin Talal, the future king of Jordan. There he learned the value of dealmaking: he earned $1,000 by connecting a Libyan classmate whose father wanted to import towels with an Egyptian classmate whose father manufactured them. His university education served as a launchpad for his career. In one of his first big deals, a construction company struggled with trucks on shifting desert sand. Using money his father gave him for a car, Khashoggi bought several Kenworth trucks, whose wide wheels handled the desert well, and leased them to the company for his first $250,000. He became Kenworth’s agent in Saudi Arabia.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he connected Western companies with the Saudi government for infrastructure and defense projects. Between 1970 and 1975, Lockheed paid him $106 million in commissions, which started at 2.5% and rose to as high as 15%. According to a Lockheed vice president, Khashoggi became “for all practical purposes a marketing arm of Lockheed,” providing not just access but strategy and analysis. He set up companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to handle his commissions and developed ties with CIA officers James H. Critchfield, Kim Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, as well as U.S. businessman Bebe Rebozo, a close associate of President Richard Nixon. His yacht, the *Nabila*, was the largest in the world at the time and appeared in the James Bond film *Never Say Never Again*. When Khashoggi faced financial trouble, he sold the yacht to the Sultan of Brunei, who later sold it to Donald Trump for $29 million; Trump then sold it for $20 million to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal as part of a deal to keep his Taj Mahal casino out of bankruptcy.