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Show The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday, September 30, 198 A3 1 Influence, Exact Wealth Immeasurable Adnart Khashoggi: A Rare Look at the Multibillion Dollar Man Continued From Page One Khashoggi. He has consistently said the deals were completely proper. His 'sleek yachts, fleet of planes and lavish homes around the world made headlines in a sensational $2.5 billion divorce case, the largest divorce action up to that time, brought in 1979 by his British-bor- n wife Sor-ayThe suit included a subpoena of former president Richard Nixon and the naming of Winston Churchill, grandson of the late prime minister, as a correspondent. Khashoggi's life became a model for Harold Robbins lusty, glittery novel The Pirate. Khashoggi focused much of his business overseas in the mid-70He developed friendships with the heads of many governments, including Juan Carlos of Spain, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, African leaders Mobutu of the Congo and Nimeri of Sudan, President Marcos of the Philippines, and the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He cattle ranch in bought a 150,000-acr- e Kenya that ranks with the worlds largest. His trading companies began to deal with Israel and China. Quiet Investments In the United States he quietly invested in land and business in Santa Barbara, Houston, Tampa, Salt Lake City and New York. His name will long be a part of Washington as well: the $5 million Adnan Khashoggi Center at the American University is scheduled to open in 1986. A spokesman says Khashoggi is often in Washington on business. He is a Saudi who believes in Americanizing his homeland economically. He has taken home factories, technology and arms. He sees himself as a modern Rockefeller, Vanderbilt or J.P. Morgan. Despite his battles here, Khashoggi says he is not angry. He says he does not get angry. He boxes his emotions and goes on to the next thing. Besides, he says, the United States is the only country worth investing in. Its the only place that is safe for the next 15 years, he sighs. Everything else, Europe, I give it five years. Everybasis. where else is on a He has homes in New York, Paris, Cannes, Monte Carlo, London, Rome, Riyadh, Beirut, Kenya, Marbella, the Canary Islands and Madrid. His Fifth Avenue apartment in New York is actually 16 apartments on two floors, a. s. Charles Tyson, formerly on the White House National Security Council, before he could join Triad. Tyson says there were about five people involved in the decision-makin- g process. Activities are kept quiet. Furmark says, Adnan is very low key . . . Who knows what he is doing may surface in five years?" The media are fed carefully controlled tidbits an article about his apartment in House & Garden, a picture story about his boat and his daughter in Town and Country. At the same time his chief of staff points proudly to an article in the National Enquirer and brags that Khashoggis picture is in front of a picture of the Saudi King. In a naive way, he likes the publicity, says an American observer. Khashoggis artful dodging of the media means answers to questions are ambiguous, circular, confusing at best, and the Khashoggi empire is like a jumbled jigzaw puzzle with pieces hidden and some of the corners missing. Even the clues are confusing: On women: ... -- i There are stories that "the jets are always filled with women, so are the homes, the yachts, says Jacob Goldberg, a Saudi expert from Israel who was a visiting professor at George Washington University. Whats So Unusual? Why do you think there are women? Khashoggi asks. Come to the boat and see. And if, lets say, Brooke Shields comes with her mother to the boat, for example, and some of the children meet her, whats so unusual? Says his son Mohammed, who dated Brooke Shields, His most im-p- o t .nt rule is always be aware, be cautious, be aware . . .He taught me I was always a target for women who want to make paternity suits On money: Hes got all the money he wants, says Miles Copeland, who was the CIA station chief in Egypt. They have been friends for 20 years since Khashoggi arranged to have an American company pay Copeland more than $1 million for a deal Copeland worked out for the Saudi government. He's building a boat. ... 600-fo- ot dont know about the new boat, says Khashoggi. You know w aen your wife is pregnant you dont I He is a Saudi who believes in Americanizing his homeland economically. He has taken home factories, technology and arms. He sees himself as a modern Rockefeller , Vanderbilt or J.P. Morgan. with a swimming pool. It is worth about $25 million. His house in Paris, two town houses together on the Avenue Montaigne, is considered by some to be one of the most impressive homes in the world. He stays in any one of his homes no longer than a few weeks at a time. Real Home is Boeing 727 Khashoggis real home is his airplane, a Boeing 727 on which he spends about 100 hours a month. It is being replaced by an ultramodern edition of the Douglas DC8. He has dubbed it 2001. He has bought the new plane, he says, so he can fly 17 hours without refueling. I want to go from Los Angeles to Riyadh nonstop, because in a few years I cant stop the danger . . . Maybe anywhere Fm wrong, but I have to take my own When he travels, his precautions. Korean bodyguard travels with him. In public places, his security men are everywhere. Like a little boys toy, a model of the DC8 sits on a conference table in his New York apartment. He fondles it as he describes it. His face falls when he hears that someone else has a similar plane. "The next one will be a rocket ship, he laughs. His art collection, which includes Picassos, Legers, and Renoirs, is worth about $30 million, says New York businessman Roy Furmark. Khashoggis wifes jewels run the gamut from knuckle-size- d sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, rubies and other precious and semiprecious stones to endless shapes and quantities of diamonds set in rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets. Robert Shaheen, an American and Khashoggis chief of staff, says his employer owns more Mercedes automobiles than any government in the world. He has a $70 steel yacht, called million 280-fothe Nabila, named for his daughter. The boat is equipped with a helicopter, a satellite guidance system and a crew of 40. We are an empire unto ourselves, says Shaheen. Nevertheless, Khashoggis personal expenses are said to be $2 million a month. His maintenance costs are said to be $100 million a year. The Nabila, being rented by the Sultan of Brunei, is up for sale. "He has a cash flow problem, says a friend. Says Khashoggi: We go up and down . . . at least nobody sued us. Hidden From Outside World Khashoggi is hidden from the outside world partly by his tightly knit organization of family and business associates. In the forefront is Shaheen, his closest aide. Ive known him 25 year: says Shaheen, "and worked for him for 75. His brother Essam is in charge of the American holding company TriadAmerica. Khashoggi listens to the advice of his older sister. She, among a few other family members, had to approve of IV its a boy or a girl until it's delivered. You might lose it in three months. Hes worth two and a half billion dollars, says Copeland. Says Khashoggi :Money has no value. Always Limousines Outside the Olympic Towers in New York City, where Khashoggi owns two floors of apartments, there is always a line of limousines. Some of the worlds wealthiest people live here; they move easily among homes in New York, Paris, Geneva and Riyadh. Its out of this world, really a spectacular place, says Abelardo Lopez Valdez, a Washington lawyer and chief protocol in the Carter administration. I have never seen anything like it, says Howard Bender, a Washington builder. Look at this Robert Shaheen almost shouts. Look how clean, how simple. Does this look like an Arab's apartment?...Taste, taste, he whispers dramatically. Shaheen, of Syrian ancestry, was raised in Ohio. He shows off the apartment with loving care, worshipping the world of Khashoggi. The apartment is a paradox of and elegance, and good taste. It is a sweeping panorama of desert sands shades of beige that flow through rooms of polished marble foors, smooth lacquered walls, plush sofas and thick carpets. The living room, the music room, the projection room, are all done in cool, quiet sand tones. Behind the living room a jungle of lush tropical plants breaks the monotony. In the dining room, a Picasso looks down on a table inlaid with lapis lazuli, meant to reflect the Manhattan skyline that sits outside the windows and mirrors. Next Dramatic Setting Dont look, dont look yet" shouts Shaheen, waiting for just the right moment to show off the next dramatic setting. It can be seen from Khashoggis bedroom, which is dominated by a powerful painting by Leger bed covered in and a brown sable. A small teddy bear sits on the edge. It goes with the color, says Shaheen. Off the bedroom is the dressing room, bathroom, the shaving room with its throne like barbers chair and the sauna. Bottles of baby oil are nearby. In the bathroom, vials of herbs and bottles of vitamins are lined up on a shelf. Khashoggi is "very fit" says his French chiroknow if practor who travels with him every- where and checks him at least once a day. In the dressing room is a closet for r his suits, a closet for jackets and sweaters, a closet for made-to-orde- Essam, Layla, Lamia and Adnan Khashoggi attend June party held in Salt Lake for the opening of Triad Center. coats, and a closet for his 30 sport shirts. His handmade cotton dress shirts are lined up by color in separate drawers and so are his socks. One of the basic things I want for Personal Comfort, him is P.C. says Shaheen. His wife Lamias bedroom is white. At the foot of her bed is a mound of small lace pillows. On the edge are propped two small dolls, one in pink, the other in purple. Near the door are some oversized stuffed animals. Shaheen uses a large office with an adjoining conference room. The chiefs office, he says, is where the head is. On one wall in the room hangs a photo of the president. The signature reads : To Adnan. With best wishes. Ronald Reagan. Khashoggi says he has not met Reagan. There is also a double photo of Khashoggi in the office. One photo shows him in a western suit the other shows him in an Arab thobe, a long caftan. Hes a Saudi, says Furmark. If you ask a Saudi, they would say this guy used to be a Saudi, but now hes an American businessman, says Jacob Goldberg. Last October, Khashoggi attended a board of trustees meeting at American University. He is a member of the board and the univeristy is building, with $5 million of his money, the Adnan Khashoggi Center. Its not just a sports center, says university n. We president Richard Berend-ecan have heads of state, the president of the United States speak there. i for everything. Love, Brooke of desert kingdom. As you see now, the goals open up," Khashoggi says We arrive. I think were in La Guardina. Were not. Were in Newark. We walk down the back steps and four limousines are at the steps Berendzen says. The group was taken to the Olympic Towers where other guests had already gathered, including actors Christopher Reeve and Ryan ONeal, actress Farah Fawcett, and models Cheryl Tiegs and Koo Stark. Afer several hours of cocktails, the guests were served a buffet dinner, then seated at a table. Says Lopez Valdez, Before I met him, I though hed be a Texas oilman type, very flambouyant.. I was impressed by the fact that he is a very quiet person...He paid a lot of attention to his guests.. He personally seated each person at the table. At 1 a.m., Berendzen gave a lecture on astronomy. Afterward, most of the Washington guests were taken by limousine to the Helmsley Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue where they each had their own suite. Khashoggi was born in Mecca in 1935. His father was physician to King Ibn Saud. They lived a privileged life, and he went to the prestigious Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt. My first deal was in high school.. Khashoggi says. "It was a boarding school in Egypt, and one boys father makes towels and sheets in Alexandria... and another was from Lubya, Its like exposure. The mind grows and then you see its so easy for you as an individual, then why dant nations do it with each other? You start thinking big, and you go into whats wrong. Why are we still poor? He read the biographies of American fortune makers John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan. He bought into banks and until Watergate in 1973 he planned to invest a billion dollars in U.S. insurance companies and financial institutions. Information About Deal During the Watergate investigation, a grand jury probing the handling of campaign contributions to Richard Nixon wad given information about a Khashoggi million-dola- r account in Bebe Rebozos Key bank, along with records of two $100,000 cash withdrawals. Khashoggi said the withdrawals were used on gambling trips in the Caribbean and for gambling debts. Khashoggis trustee for the account said records of the transactions were stolen from him. No action was taken against Khashoggi. In 1975, in a Senate subcommittee investigation of foreign payments by Shields. Like a little boys toy , a model of the DC8 sits on a conference table in his New York apartment. He fondles it as he describes it. His face falls when he hears that someone else has a similar plane. The next one will be a rocket ship, he laughs. Berendzen says that after the board meeting, Khashoggi came in my office. I have astronomical He asked me about the pictures of black holes and so on. Later, Shaheen invited him to come to New York the next night to give an astronomical lecture, bring along some friends, Berendzen says Shaheen told him. Enough Room for All? The Berendzens made some calls. We get panicked. We had 14 people. How is everyone going to fit on the the plane? ...I called him up in New York, and asked how many people does it hold? Shaheen says 35. The plane was a Boeing 727. You enter from the rear. The back half of the plane has been converted into something resembling a hotel lobby, benchlike seats, coffee tables... Then theres a small sitting room, a bedroom with a video projection and a shower. The shower really got me. Imagine taking a shower 40,000 feet up in the air," says Berendzen. pic-tue- s. There were three men in the cockpit and at least three more to attend to the guests, including Secretary of Agriculture John Block; Carolyn Deaver, wife of the assistant to the president; television producer Nancy Dickerson; Texas oilman William Moss; Abellardo Lopez Valdez; lawyer Barrett Prettyman; Stewart and Wilma Bernstein; and Howard and Sandra Bender, who is on the board of the University and a substantial con tributor to the school. There will be a Bender Arena in the Adnan Khashoggi Center. During the short flight Berendzen noticed a guest book and flipped through the pages. One of the signatures was Jimmy Carter. A spoke-ma- n said the former president visited briefly with Khashoggi on the ground at a refueling stop in the Azores. Another note in the book read:"Dcar Uncle Adnan. Thank you I International businessman has lavishly invested in Utah, as well as myriad properties throughout the United States. and his father wanted to buy these things..I called my friend and put him together with this father, and then he sent me a check for 500 pounds (about kid to get 500 $1,400). A pounds. My pocket money was two pounds a week! So that made me feel its only putting people together you make money. Studied at Stanford Khashoggi next studied at Chico State and Stanford University in California. While in California, his father sent him $10,000 to buy an automobile. Instead he bought some trucks and and sold them to a Saudi friend of his fathers. He recieved a fat commission and followed it with more agenting for Americna products. At about the same time he formed a corporation with his father in Saudi Arabia, and recieved a concession to de- velop the countrys gypsum depositories. He also became the Saudi representative for Rolls-RoycHis commissions began moving upward and in the early 1960s he sold enough Kenworth trucks to the Saudi royal family to earn him almost in agents fees and the $250,000 friendship of the future defense minister. The trucks, used for desert patrols, led the way to more defense contracts. He arranged for an American client to manage an airbase in Dhahran, and soon was smoothing the way for more arms deals. Then came F-- 5 fighter planes from Northrop Corp. and the Hawk Missile system from Raytheon Co. Lockhead Corp had reported it paid Khashoggi $106 million in commissions between 1970 and 1975 on sales of TriStar and aircraft to the Saudi Arabians. Khashoggi also represented British, Belgian and French firms. In addition to defense systems, Khashoggi brought in training programs and maintenance facilities that are still part of the Saudi defense. Khashoggi says he wanted to estaballiance that lish a would help create a nation state out e. Saudi-America- n Bis-cay- American multinational corporations, Northrop Corp. said it had paid Khashoggi $450,000 in bribes for Saudi generals. Khashoggi denied the al- the Security legation. In the mid-70- s and Exchange Commission tried to subpoena Khashoggi as part of an investigation to see if disclousre rules had been violated by Northrop Corp. When Khashoggi tried to form a bank holding company in 1978 the Federal Reserve Board blocked the deal, saying he hadnt cooperated with the SEC investigation. In 1979 a process server for Los Angeles divorce attorney Marvin Mitchelson served Kahshoggi on his plane with a $2.5 billion divorce suit. Khashsoggi had divorced his first of wide Soraya (Sandra Jarvis-Dal- y Leichester, England) in the Beirut Islamic Court in 1974. She sued for divorce in California claiming that the earlier divorce was illegal. Soraya asked for $2 billion in property, plus $500 million punitive damages, plus $1 million a year for the next 40 years for general damages. She claimed to be more than a wife and mother of five: Among other things, she said she had helped Khashoggi with his English and helped deliver a present of jewelry to Julie Nixon Eisenhower. Khashoggi challended the courts jurisdiction in the divorce. No Jurisdiction Two years later a California superior court ruled that the state had no jurisdiction because Soraya had moved there soley for the purpose of suing for divorce. In January 1982, Khashoggis artful dodging of the media means answers to questions are ambiguous, circular, confusing at best, and the Khashoggi empire is like a jumbled jigsaiv puzzle with pieces hidden and some of the corners missing. Even the clues are confusing. Mitchelson announced an settlement. He refused to disclose the terms, but said "Im smiling rt arent IF With his international Triad Holding Co. as an umbrella organization, and his two borthers Essam and Adil as watchdogs, the Khashoggi empire of the 1980s includes 53 subsidaries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, North America and South America. The company has interests in food and agribusiness, finance and economic de- velopment, defense, energy and trade. Triad owns ranches, farms and land development projects in Kenya, Gabon and Sudan. The company has I m. m 4 w- m. petroleum projects in the United States, Canada and Alaska, trading companies in the Phillippines, a pipeline project with Morocco, and dozens of worldwide businesses that range from furniture distributors to meatpackers. Many of the businesses and their dealing are complex. In the Sudan, Khashoggi brought together as many as 30 banks, including Chase Manhattan and Citibank, for a $200 million his fee was $1 mildevelopment lion. In another case, Khashoggi bought 135 Travel Lodge motels in the Far East, then "took the small ones dnd sold them to the local people ...kept the big ones and then packaged them, and with an investment of $20 million, turned around and sold it to a nice Chinese guy who bought the whole package for $100 million. People Bartered Then Before there were dollars or marks or yen. people bartered. Cows were traded for cloth; and cloth was traded for sheep and sheep were traded for shelter: a primitive system. Khashoggi thinks it should work that way again. Khashoggi has been working on barter ideas for two years and has been practicing it, he says, for six months. He practices a thing called lateral thinking, says an American observer, "thinking thoughts no one ever thought before. He was reading a newspaper one morning and realized that three countries in Latin America were about to renege on their loans. The only answer was for those countries to have austerity programs. A.K. realized thats the last thing they could do . . . How to get the pressure off? Get off the monetary system and just barter. These days barter can be complicated, involving credits, discounts and counter-trad- e with complex deals among several countries. It takes a middleman to put it all together, of course. For example," Khashoggi says, Ill give you a deal we are working in some South American country. Thy have a loan which is with some leading bank here which is $100 Million. The bank is ready to sell this loan, giving it to a second bank at 50 percent of its value. So we buy this loan $50 million. Of course, we dont buy it before we make out the whole transaction, but that's one element of the deal. Buy Certain Minerals Then we go to the country and they have certain minerals. We say we'll buy $200 million worth of your minerals. Well pay you 50 percent with your own loans. So, already we make $50 million. Second $100 million well pay you in trucks from Brazil or Volkswagens or whatever it is And they need this equipment. So we have a fee from the equipment, we have it discounted we take this business we give it to our five correspondents Japanese trading companies which thty dont get directly at a discount because the prices are fixed by governments. So we have enough margin to do that . we can be the catalyst to bring all these people while they deal ondirect barter deals." Khashoggi has been married to his second wife. Lamia, for six vears but has known her much longei. Born in Italy, she is about 30 years old. tall and slim, has dark hair, and a turned-unose. Like his first wife, she has converted to Islam. Her marriage . See Page 4, Column 4 t M H.Km mm 4 ip i 1 |