https://www.wsj.com/articles/adnan-k...ace-1497016802
Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi Go-Between, Tried to Profit on War and Peace
His reputation faded amid business failures abroad and resentments at home
Adnan Khashoggi arrived at a Federal Court in New York in 1990. He was entangled in the Iran-Contra affair and other controversies. PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS
By James R. Hagerty
June 9, 2017 10:00 a.m. ET
He was best known as a middleman arranging arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but Adnan Khashoggi was also happy to traffic in real estate, asphalt, livestock and even peace.
In the mid-1990s, when he was trying to spur peace negotiations and business dealings between Israel and neighboring states, a friend quoted Mr. Khashoggi as saying, “If we can’t make peace, perhaps we can make money.”
The problem was that peace never arrived, and nothing seemed to pay nearly as well as the arms deals he helped arrange in the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually, his reputation for flaunting wealth stirred resentments in the Saudi royal family. When Time magazine put him on its cover in 1987, his business empire was in trouble. His entanglement in the Iran-Contra affair and other controversies made him less appealing to Western companies seeking discreet help in tapping Arab markets.
Mr. Khashoggi lived his final two decades in relative obscurity. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died Tuesday in London at age 81.
He was known to his employees as A.K. and once owned an 18,000-square-foot duplex in Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The Washington Post reported in 1984 that he also had homes in Paris, London, Rome and Madrid, among other places.
When he wasn’t in one of those homes, he was likely to be aloft in one of his private planes or afloat in his 285-foot yacht, which made an appearance in the James Bond movie “Never Say Never Again” and later was owned briefly by Donald Trump. The band Queen saluted the yacht with a song, “Khashoggi’s Ship.”
He often traveled with a Korean bodyguard nicknamed Mr. Kill.
In the early 1960s, he married an Englishwoman, Sandra Jarvis-Daly. She converted to Islam and changed her name to Soraya. Their divorce led to a 1980 legal battle in California, during which she accused him of giving expensive gifts to executives of defense contractors, helping them open Swiss bank accounts and inviting them to parties attended by prostitutes. Mr. Khashoggi’s lawyers at the time declined to comment.
Adnan Mohamed Khashoggi was born July 25, 1935, in Mecca. His father, a physician to Saudi King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, sent him to Alexandria, Egypt, to study at Victoria College, a boarding school modeled on the elite English secondary schools. He later recalled discovering his calling there: One classmate’s father had a factory making sheets and towels, and another’s wanted to buy those items. Young Adnan made the connection and collected a fee.
He began studies at a state college in Chico, Calif., but dropped out after finding he could earn fees by arranging shipments of vehicles to the Middle East.
The real money was in military jets and other weaponry. He cultivated clients among defense contractors in the U.S., Britain and France. Lockheed Corp. disclosed that it had paid him commissions totaling $106 million in the five years ended in 1975. Shortly after that disclosure, the Saudi government issued a decree banning companies that sold arms to the kingdom from paying commissions to agents.
Mr. Khashoggi was in the headlines in the late 1980s as the U.S. Congress unearthed details of how proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua. An independent counsel appointed to investigate that scandal found that Mr. Khashoggi lent millions of dollars to a broker involved in the deal to facilitate the arms sales. (Mr. Khashoggi said he lost money on the deal.)
He amassed a Byzantine global network of businesses, including cattle ranching and real estate, and interests in furniture and meat packing. In 1987, nine U.S. companies he controlled filed for bankruptcy. Those U.S. interests included an asphalt plant in Long Beach, Calif., and a planned shopping center in Salt Lake City.
In 1989, Swiss police arrested Mr. Khashoggi at a luxury hotel, held him in prison for three months and then extradited him to the U.S. to face charges that he helped former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, loot their country to buy jewelry, art and real estate. A federal jury in New York acquitted Mr. Khashoggi and Mrs. Marcos in 1990. Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989.
A list of Mr. Khashoggi’s survivors wasn’t available.
He was unapologetic about his checkered career. “Where did I go wrong?’’ he asked during a 2009 interview with the New York Times . “Nowhere.’’
Write to James R. Hagerty at
bob.hagerty@wsj.com
Appeared in the June 10, 2017, print edition as 'Saudi Go-Between Tried To Profit on War and Peace.'