- Subscribe Now
- Digital Editions
James Bond boats: 11 times yachts have stolen the show in a 007 movie
- Top stories
MI6’s most famous fictional agent can’t seem to keep away from the water - here’s our pick of the best James Bond boats and the fascinating stories behind them…
Who can forget Roger Moore’s comedic rendition of James Bond flying the Glastron speedboat in Live and Let Die ? Or the gorgeous Sunseeker Sovereign 17 in Quantum of Solace , starring the British actor with the bluest eyes, Daniel Craig?
James Bond boats are a key feature of every film they appear in. Sleek, classy, powerful and smart, just like everybody’s favourite British secret agent, these vessels have at times stolen the show, even from 007 himself.
Read on to see some of the beautiful and at times wacky craft that have appeared in James Bond films over the past 60 years.
11 of the most iconic James Bond boats
Fairey Huntress and Fairey Huntsman in From Russia With Love (1963)
It all began with a young Sean Connery heading to Venice, accompanied by Tatiana Romanova, four spare fuel barrels and a flare gun. When the baddies track him down, 007’s explosive escape is as spectacular as it is predictable.
Recommended videos for you
The producers clearly loved Fairey so much that they couldn’t pick just one model for Bond to drive – the exterior shots show a Huntress, but the interiors are from the Huntsman model. Meanwhile, the Venice boat chase was actually shot in Scotland.
Read more about the Fairey Huntsman
Disco Volante in Thunderball (1965)
The fictional Disco Volante that appeared in 1965’s Thunderball had quite the starring role. Owned by villain Emilio Largo, the hydrofoil boat was purchased with SPECTRE funds to carry two nuclear weapons. It cost the global terrorist organisation £250,000, which equates to roughly £4.3million in today’s money.
The vessel is destroyed following a battle between Largo and Bond. With nobody at the helm, it runs aground and bursts into flames.
Bond production designer Sir Ken Adam stipulated that Disco Volante had to be 160ft long and capable of 50 knots. No such boat existed, so they created one that shed its aft accommodation section before rising onto hydrofoils to outrun pursuing navy ships.
Glaston GT-150 in Live and Let Die (1974)
Possibly the most famous Bond boat ever, this 135hp Glastron performed a spectacular leap over two cars and a baffled Louisiana sheriff in Bayou Des Allemands.
The helm position, normally offset to one side to allow a passenger, was centrally mounted, and underneath the boat were small black skids designed to keep the boat level on terra firma.
A grand total of 26 Glastron boats were used in the filming of Live and Let Die , 17 of which were wrecked. But it was worth it, with an iconic movie moment in the can and a new world record for the biggest boat jump – a staggering 120ft!
As an interesting post-script, Roger Moore, who learned to helm a boat specifically so that he could be filmed in the chase, clearly got a taste for boating and in retirement kept one close to his private villa in Cap d’Antibes.
Read more about the Glastron GT-150
Watch a yacht tour of Sir Roger Moore’s Sunseeker Tomahawk 41
Lotus Esprit S1 submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
There is a more conventional motorboat in The Spy Who Loved Me (an Intermarine 40 was used to shuttle Bond out to meet the villain at his offshore lair) but the one everyone remembers is the amphibious Lotus personal submarine.
Fitted with fins, front-mounted rocket launchers, mines, a periscope, a smoke screen and a surface-to-air missile, it cost a reported $100,000 for Eon Productions to adapt the Esprit S1 roadcar into one of Bond’s most spectacular vehicles, lovingly known as Wet Nellie .
Glastron CV23HT in Moonraker (1979)
With all the ridiculousness of its extra-terrestrial finale, it’s easy to forget that Moonraker also features a fantastic Amazon boat chase.
Roger Moore’s silver Glastron Carlson CV23HT fends off Jaws’ henchmen by deploying homing missiles, and the big man himself is foiled when Bond makes a spectacular escape over the Iguazu falls. Wings pop out of the roof, allowing Bond to fly off as the baddies speed off the edge.
This hard top model was available to buy in a super-rare limited edition of just 300, but sadly they all came with that sparkly metal flake paint job.
The 86m superyacht Nabila was later renamed Trump Princess . Photo: Jacques Soffer / AFP / Getty
Nabila in Never Say Never Again (1983)
Never Say Never Again put villain Maximillian Largo aboard The Flying Saucer once again. This time it was the turn of the Benetti superyacht Nabila , built for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and later sold to Donald Trump, to take centre stage.
At 86m long, this can lay claim to being the largest James Bond boat so far by quite some distance, and at the time of filming it held the honour of being the world’s largest private yacht.
Sunseeker Superhawk 34 in The World is Not Enough (1999)
In what is perhaps the most famous James Bond boat chase scene, a hair-raising race along the Thames provides a blockbuster opening to Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as 007.
Stealing Q’s retirement boat and bursting out of MI6, Bond jets through London (quite literally) and catches up with the mysterious assassin in the shadow of the Millenium Dome, after a highly implausible shortcut through the Docklands.
This time we prefer the villain’s choice of boat – a super-sleek Sunseeker Superhawk 34 that appears to be able to drive itself at times. Powerboat racer Sarah Donohue was the stunt double for Giulietta da Vinci in the scene and got the chance to show off her impressive helming skills.
Watch our yacht tour video of a restored Sunseeker Superhawk 34
Spirit 54 Soufrière in Casino Royale (2006)
The Bond reboot in 2006 coincided with the appearance of James Bond’s first proper sailing yacht.
British yard Spirit Yachts got the gig, providing the Spirit 54 Soufrière that 007 and Vesper Lynd sailed up the Grand Canal of Venice.
“Probably the most challenging voyage for Soufrière came during filming in Venice when we had to take the rig in and out ten times,” Spirit Yachts CEO and head designer Sean McMillan revealed in 2016. “She was the first sailing yacht to go up the Grand Canal for 300 years.”
Venice was just one stop on her exhaustive filming schedule though. Soufrière was shipped to the Bahamas, sailed to Puerto Rico and through the British Virgin Islands to Tortola Harbour, before being shipped to Croatia.
An honourable mention should also go to the Sunseeker Predator 108 that serves as Le Chiffre’s floating lair.
Sunseeker Sovereign 17 in Quantum of Solace (2008)
2008’s Quantum saw Bond go Sunseeker crazy, with a Sunseeker 37M Yacht, an XS2000 and a Superhawk 43 all featuring.
However, it was the vintage 1970 Sunseeker Sovereign 17 that stole the show, with Sunseeker founder Robert Braithwaite at the helm as 007 was skippered across a lake.
There’s further boating action when Bond steals a wooden fishing boat to escape the gun-toting villains giving chase in a RIB.
The spectacular chase scene that follows is courtesy of a secret stunt driver, who was hidden in the bow end of the indigenous vessel.
Pruva Regina in Skyfall (2012)
Pruva Yachting supplied the 56m sailing superyacht for Bond and Severine’s voyage to Silva’s Hashima island hideaway. Referred to as Chimera in the film, the schooner-rigged yacht was launched in Turkey the year before for 28-year-old Pruva vice-chairman Dogukan Boyaci.
For this reason all the scenes were actually shot off the coast of Bodrum, apart from Bond and Severine’s steamy shower encounter, which was done in a studio as the yacht’s shower wasn’t large enough. Pruva Regina , as the yacht was known in real life, has since been sold and renamed Aria I .
Spirit 46 in No Time To Die (2021)
Craig’s final outing as Bond saw him sail a Spirit yacht once more, this time while enjoying his retirement in Jamaica.
It was the Spirit 46 that was chosen for the big screen treatment, however, this wasn’t the only boat involved in the film, with a Royal Navy Destroyer playing a crucial role in the shocking finale.
Read an interview with Spirit Yachts CEO Sean McMillan about how the Spirit 46 was chosen for No Time To Die .
New Fjord F480 first look: 40 knot capable 47 footer
Navan s30 & c30 tour: exceptional new axopar rival, axopar 29 yacht tour: exclusive tour by the man behind it, latest videos, galeon 440 fly sea trial: you won’t believe how much they’ve packed in, parker sorrento yacht tour: 50-knot cruiser with a killer aft cabin, yamarin 80 dc tour: a new direction for the nordic day cruiser.
March 21, 2024
Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi owner of Bond yacht dies aged 81
While many of bonds vehicles came from famous manufacturers and have been modified to suit his needs, there was one yacht lent to irvin kershner’s rival bond film ‘never say never again’ which has a different story.
[su_divider top=”no” divider_color=”#c5b358″ link_color=”#ffffff” size=”2″]
Built in 1980 by Italian yacht builder Benetti at a cost of $291million (2016 equivalent), the 86 meter long Nabila had a starring role in Sean Connery’s final outing as agent 007. The original owner of the luxury yacht was Saudi billionaire and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi who died today aged 81. He had famously made the news after being implicated in the 1985-87 Iran–Contra affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange.
Named after his daughter Nabila, the yacht was once the largest in the world. At the time of delivery to Khashoggi it featured five decks with a disco, a cinema with seats for 12 and 2 double beds, 11 opulent suites, a helipad on top, a pool with a water jet on top in front of the heliport, 2 Riva tenders, a crew of 48, a top speed of 20 knots, and cruising speed of 17.5 knots. Propulsion was supplied by two 3,000 horsepower (2,200 kW) Nohab Polar engines. Needless to say, it naturally also had a garage for Khashoggis Rolls Royce Phantom V.
In the 1983 rival and unofficial James Bond film ‘ Never Say Never Again’ , the Nabila was renamed to “Flying Saucer” which was a translation of the Italian “Disco Volante” in Ian Flemings novel ‘ Thunderball’ and the 1965 film of the same name. As in novel and original film, the yacht served as the mobile headquarters of villain Largo (Klaus-Maria Brandauer) whose first name had been changed to Maximilian.
When Khashoggi was forced to sell the Nabila due to financial problems, the Sultan of Brunei acquired it in 1988 and in turn sold it to Donald Trump for $29 million. After a refit, Trump renamed it Trump Princess . Having run into financial difficulties himself in 1991, Trump sold the yacht to Saudi business magnate and philantropist Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal for $20 million who renamed it to “Kingdom 5KR” .
Published in News
- behind the scenes
- never say never again
Benjamin Lind became a James Bond fan at the age of 15 and has since closely followed the production of every film since 'Tomorrow Never Dies'. Apart from writing about Bond, he is a founding member of the James Bond Club Germany and holds a position as advisor in its executive committee. In 2016, Lind released a charity documentary film entitled 'A Bond For Life - How James Bond changed my Life' in support of UNICEF.
Be First to Comment
Leave a reply cancel reply.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .
The true story of billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, his 11-strong harem and £150,000-a-day lifestyle
He nearly brought down the US government, and his yacht was featured in a James Bond film, then later sold to Donald Trump - even as he faced bankruptcy
- 11:34, 22 Nov 2017
- Updated 12:49, 22 Nov 2017
"An extraordinary lover," is the glowing verdict of one of Adnan Khashoggi's "pleasure wives," 1980s model Jill Dodd, despite him being over twenty years older than her, and several inches shorter.
Khashoggi, who died in London aged 81 earlier this month, believed that under the law of his birthplace, Saudi Arabia, a man is allowed 11 "pleasure wives" - lovers, essentially - and three legal wives.
Jill was "a 21-year-old child" when she fell into a relationship with Khashoggi in 1980. They had met at a party in Cannes, where the young model thought that the short, balding man reminded her of friend's father.
The billionaire ended the evening by writing "I love you" in his blood on Jill's arm.
The next night, Khashoggi invited Jill for dinner on his yacht, where she was given the run of his room full of couture gowns, choosing a grey Lanvin dress for the occasion.
Married for the second time, Khashoggi kept seeing Jill platonically for months, even inviting her to his one-year-old son Ali's birthday party.
His second wife, Lamia (born Laura Biancolini in Italy, she changed her name and converted to Islam upon marriage), was unsurprisingly cold to her husband's newest possible love interest.
Khashoggi's first wife, Soraya, had been at 20, half his age when they married in 1961.
Born Sandra Daly on a Leicester council estate, she took the name Soraya when she converted to Islam to marry Khashoggi.
She gave birth to five of Khashoggi's children - including Nabila, the yacht's namesake - while another daughter, Petrina, was fathered by Conservative MP Jonathan Aitken.
After a week at Khashoggi's Marbella compound, waiting for him to arrive in the country, Jill Dodd was woken by him in the middle of the night.
He watched her strip off and take a bubble bath, then made her an extraordinary offer: to become his pleasure wife, and travel to his properties around the world with him.
Jill agreed - and joined the Khashoggi harem. He acted like a default father in some ways, such as paying for her tuition at the Los Angeles Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Her lover's generosity really paid off for her - she would later found the Roxy surf and snowboard clothing brand in the late 1980s.
Jill Dodd's relationship with the flashy arms dealer didn't last beyond 1982, as she felt her prime position within his harem slip away. Khashoggi was turning his attention to newer, younger models.
In her memoir The Currency of Love: A Courageous Journey to Finding the Love Within , Jill, now 57, only has good things to say about Khashoggi.
"I never forfeited my independence, ambition or creative expression when I was with Adnan and have no regrets.
"I’ve learned a valuable lesson: Neither money nor love is worth the sacrifice of integrity, inner peace and authenticity."
Jill's education is a rare example of Khashoggi spending money on something that couldn't be seen, worn or docked in St Tropez.
By the mid-1980s, he had 12 homes across the world, in expensive locations like Cannes, Paris, Madrid and London.
His New York apartment was comprised of 16 flats knocked together to create a super-sized pad.
He also owned a compound in Marbella, where he hosted his wildest parties.
The billionaire had 100 limousines, three private jets and a South Korean bodyguard, named Mr Kill.
Khashoggi's famous yacht, the Nabila (named for his daughter), cost $80m and boasted a disco with laser beams that projected Khashoggi's face, 11 (that number again) guest rooms, on-board hospital, morgue with coffins and bulletproof glass.
He loaned his vessel to the makers of the 1983 James Bond Film, Never Say Never Again. The yacht became baddie Blofeld's headquarters.
Khashoggi's pampered yet insecure harem of "pleasure wives" only saw one side of his complicated, high-rolling life.
They were not given a peek at how he made the money that bought them diamond rings and Lanvin dresses on tap.
The conspicuous consumption and endless parties featuring free-flowing champagne, unlimited caviar and celebrity pals flown in private jets helped cement Khashoggi's reputation as the Gatsby of his time.
The intrigue around him kept his shady weapons deals firmly in the dark.
Adnan Khashoggi was born in the holy city of Mecca in 1935, one of the six children of the Turkish court doctor to King Ibn Saud.
He went to school in Egypt, then college in California.
Aged 21, he brokered his first major deal, selling $3 million- worth of trucks to Egypt; this netted him $150,000 commission.
Unsurprisingly, after this, Khashoggi didn't return to college.
Instead, he built his career - and incredible fortune - on the shaky back of freelance deal-making. He called it "merchantry."
A 1987 Time cover story on the billionaire featured his face, alongside the taglines 'Those Shadowy Arms Traders' and 'Adnan Khashoggi's High Life and Flashy Deals'.
He did business with the all the main arms dealers: Northrop, Lockheed, Grumman, Chrysler, Fiat, the Westland helicopter company, Rolls-Royce and Raytheon.
He set these companies up with buyers for their military wares: most often, governments.
Moving in these powerful, dangerous circles led to the scandal that cost Khashoggi his place in the global elite.
In 1987, Khashoggi was implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair, the biggest political scandal of the 1980s.
The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of Iranian hostages, and then diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels.
The international intrigue had tendrils stretching as far as Lebanon, and involved deal-making with Hezbollah.
Adnan Khashoggi was named as a key middleman in this labyrinthine plot, accused of paying bribes.
In 1988, he was arrested in Switzerland and faced charges of concealing funds.
After three months in a Swiss prison (where he ate gourmet meals brought in from a nearby restaurant in his cell), Khashoggi was extradited to the US, tried and acquitted.
Scandal continued to dog the disgraced billionaire as the 1980s came to a close.
In 1989, Khashoggi was indicted in New York for sheltering assets for Imelda Marcos, widow of Ferdinand Marcos, the 10th president of the Phillippines.
Both were eventually acquitted from charges of fraud and racketeering.
Khashoggi's government links started fading away as the 1980s moved into the 90s.
He lost his Washington contacts after Reagan left office, and when other important clients such as the Shah of Iran and the President of Sudan were ousted from power, they were no longer in the market for his services.
In a 1989 Vanity Fair profile of Adnan Khashoggi, Donald Trump told the reporter Dominick Dunne about his purchase of Khashoggi's famed yacht, the Nabila, which he renamed the Trump Princess:
"Khashoggi was a great broker and a lousy businessman,” Trump said to me that night.
“He understood the art of bringing people together and putting together a deal better than almost anyone—all the bullshitting part, of talk and entertainment—but he never knew how to invest his money.
"If he had put his commissions into a bank in Switzerland, he’d be a rich man today, but he invested it, and he made lousy choices.”
The 1990s were a decade of decline for Khashoggi, as the court cases starting lining up.
He was finally having to pay for his excessive 80s. For example, he was forced to settle a £10 million gambling debt from a 1986 visit to the London Ritz Casino - in 1998.
He spent the last years of his life between London and Monaco, reportedly living on his last $400 million.
In his final years, Khashoggi evaporated from public view, the champagne-and-caviar parties all over for him.
He was battling Parkinson's disease when he died at St Thomas' Hospital in London on 6 June 2017.
He is survived by his second wife Lamia, his third wife Shahpari, his eight children and countless "pleasure wives."
MORE ON Donald Trump Adnan Khashoggi James Bond Billionaires Films
Get email updates with the day's biggest stories.
The incredible story of the world’s richest arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi
Just how did the world’s richest man lose his fortune.
Words: Gentleman's Journal
Adnan Khashoggi was the charismatic arms fixer clients, classmates and even the US government could rely on. But unlike his rivals, his deals were brokered not in backstreet dens but at parties drowning in Champagne, caviar and Hollywood A-listers. So just how did the world’s richest man lose his fortune?
I first heard of Adnan Khashoggi at a gathering in a golf club outside Marbella. The guests were the owners of mansions dotting the hills on the outskirts of town. If you looked down the valley past the fairways and greens, you could see the tax haven of Gibraltar just out to sea. I was chatting to a London hedge fund manager who, realising I didn’t work in finance, changed the topic to the club’s previous owner.
‘You know all of this used to belong to Khashoggi?’ he said. ‘This whole estate used to be his private hunting ground. This was his lodge.’ I’d wondered what relation the taxidermy and animal skulls plastered on the walls bore to golf, but I had no idea who the man was. Having seen the size of the estate spread across the face of two mountains, I was intrigued to find out.
One of Khashaggi’s many homes
Today, he is something of a forgotten legend, but in the Eighties he was at the very centre of the international jet set. Although never convicted of any crime, he made his $4bn fortune from brokering deals between arms manufacturers, governments and private clients. He was considered the richest man in the world and became famous for his life of extravagance and excess.
The media labelled him the era’s most prolific weapon dealer before he was implicated in a scandal that destroyed his business and almost brought down the US government in the process.
The hedge fund manager was surprised I’d never heard of him and told me that Khashoggi’s sister was Dodi Al Fayed’s mother, thinking it’d give some idea of who he was talking about. ‘The Spanish government seized the estate from him and sold it on, but the basement is completely untouched since he lived here. It’s like a time warp. The parties he had down there were legendary.’
Khashoggi on the cover of The Washington Post in 1984
It was enough to spark my curiosity and over the course of the last few years I have spoken to people who knew him or have watched his movements with intense interest. And, I eventually found my way into that forgotten basement.
Some months after the meeting at the golf club I spoke to Ronald Kessler, Khashoggi’s biographer. He attended some of the soirées at the lodge when Khashoggi was at the height of his fame. His 50th birthday saw the party to end them all.
‘One of his brothers gave him a lion cub,’ he says. ‘Shirley Bassey belted out, “Happy birthday dear Adnan.”’ There were Hollywood stars, including Brooke Shields and Sean Connery. Several refrigerator trucks were parked outside solely to cool the champagne. ‘The birthday cake was a work of art – literally,’ Kessler continues. ‘On top was a gold crown measuring 3ft across and made of sugar. Khashoggi’s chief chef had flown to the Louvre to study Louis XIV’s coronation crown, then returned with his plan for the cake.’ Balloons were dropped from the ceiling adorned with the slogan ‘World’s Greatest’. ‘Anyone who was there knew they’d reached the pinnacle of high society.’
Although it may all sound like a trumped-up Ferrero Rocher advert, in the rarefied world of the Eighties, business magnate reputation was everything. If you needed an arms deal funded or a shopping mall built, a healthy bottom line or triple-A credit rating were by the by. Far better to throw a $6m birthday party and sweep your creditors away to Marbella on one of your three private jets. Risky deals were made and dubious loans granted over little more than a hunch and an expensive dinner. No one knew this better than Adnan Khashoggi.
With his second wife, Lamia, in Monaco in 2006
According to folklore, the young Khashoggi brokered his first business deal when still at high school. He arranged a meeting between the fathers of two classmates, one a hotel manager, the other an oil magnate, charging $1,000 for the privilege. A few years later he quit university in the US and used the money his father gave him for his studies to broker a deal between US and Saudi logistics companies and received $50,000 in commission. With this he formed his company Triad Holdings, which he used for legitimate business interests throughout his career. It was the front companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein he used for the other deals.
Kessler told me that, like all great networkers, he genuinely liked people and people genuinely liked him. Many years ago Donald Trump said, ‘Khashoggi understood the art of bringing people together and putting together a deal better than almost anyone – all the bullshitting part, of talk and entertainment.’
Trump, like so many business tycoons of the era, seemed to have inherited some of Khashoggi’s panache for making deals and some of his taste for garish decadence. He also inherited his multi-million dollar superyacht, Nabila. Trump bought it from the Sultan of Brunei who seized it from Khashoggi when he defaulted on a loan for which the boat was security.
The Nabila, named after Khashoggi’s daughter, was the jewel in the crown of his billionaire lifestyle. At a total cost of around $80m, it had a 12-seat movie theatre, two saunas, a swimming pool, a discothèque, a jacuzzi, a billiard room and 11 guest rooms all clad in white chamois leather and spread over five decks. The master suite had four rooms and a bathroom with a solid gold sink. The glass was bulletproof, but the ship also had an on-board ‘hospital’ with the slightly macabre addition of a morgue, if all else failed. In the Bond film Never Say Never Again , the ship was used as the nerve centre for an international criminal mastermind.
By the mid-Eighties, Khashoggi’s property empire included 12 homes spread across the world: Cannes, Paris, Madrid, London, and, of course, Marbella. In New York he bought 16 flats and knocked them together into one vast apartment. He owned 100 limousines, three private jets and boasted a South Korean bodyguard trained in martial arts. He also featured on the cover of Time magazine and TV shows such as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous , which typified the image of the Eighties tycoon.
The show was hosted by Robin Leach, who joined Khashoggi at his homes, on his private jets and his superyachts. ‘He was the Gatsby of his time,’ he says. ‘At his parties it was unlimited champagne, unlimited caviar, fancy dresses, beautiful jewels and a slew of Hollywood celebrities flown in on private jets.’
Inside Khashoggi’s private jet
As Mr Leach had met so many of the Eighties wealthiest, I asked him what set Khashoggi apart? ‘The ability to fly to any continent at a minute’s notice, the houses in all the swanky places including his Mount Kenya Safari Club estate, the New York apartment – all fabulously decorated. No expense spared.’
His comments on Khashoggi’s character sounded very familiar. ‘Warm, friendly, sociable, a winning smile that could charm anybody, even his detractors. The time spent in his company was always fun and enjoyable except once when his bodyguards wanted me to throw a game of table tennis so he won. You would never have guessed he was involved in arms deals.’
The fact that Khashoggi worked so hard to cultivate a lifestyle of extravagance might suggest he grew up in the orbit of exceptional wealth, but he didn’t. He was from a relatively modest, middle-class family. His father was a physician, distinguished by the fact he was family doctor to King Abdulaziz of the House of Saud. Abdulaziz was the ruler who unified Arabia before he oversaw the discovery of petroleum and its mass export to the west.
‘Carnegie began manufacturing steel when there was a great need for it for railroads,’ Kessler suggests. ‘One could argue that Khashoggi fell into a similarly fortunate situation.’ He came along at just the same time as Saudi Arabia’s billions of petrodollars and was canny enough to identify it along with their need for arms. All that was left was to bring together the American arms manufacturers and his childhood connections. He put two and two together and made billions over the course of the Sixties and Seventies.
Not that Khashoggi himself saw what he did as arms dealing. When an interviewer, perplexed at how it could be called anything but, asked what it was he was up to Khashoggi replied simply, ‘Marketing’.
Khasshoggi on the cover in 1987
Indeed, the director of Lockheed Martin described Khashoggi as a one-man marketing department, and the company rewarded him in kind with over $100m in the time he worked with them. The main customer was the Saudi government, but he helped smaller clients too. He reportedly provided David Stirling, who founded the modern SAS, with arms for a covert operation in Yemen in 1963 and countless others we may never know about.
While Khashoggi’s public image and business interests entered the stratosphere, his personal life started to become rather more tumultuous. His first marriage in 1961 was to English socialite Sandra Daly, who was half his age, double his height and grew up on a Leicester council estate. She subsequently converted to Islam and took the name Soraya before she became pregnant with Khashoggi’s children. It later transpired the Conservative MP Jonathan Aitken had fathered at least one of them.
‘Khashoggi was 5ft 4in tall and weighed about 200lbs, but he somehow seemed robust more than flabby,’ Kessler told me. ‘He had a deep gaze with a charming mystery to it.’ His diminutive figure didn’t appear to be an issue when it came to women.
Khashoggi was no stranger to infidelities himself. In 2006 he gave an interview freely admitting his penchant for prostitutes and claimed he’d hired Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, as a call girl for one of his parties at the Marbella hunting lodge. Despite this, when I asked Kessler if he knew what happened at the basement parties I’d been told about he declined to comment.
Khashoggi’s supernova lifestyle reached fever pitch in the mid-Eighties. Some estimates suggest he was spending around $300,000 a day when the scandal that would bring about his downfall began to emerge. The Iran Contra Affair involved a secret sale of weapons by the US government to Iran when it was supposed to be under an arms embargo. The Reagan administration initiated the sale as part of a complex deal that led Iran to release US hostages and fund the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua on behalf of the US. When the scandal hit in 1987, Reagan made a grovelling public apology for misleading the American public (‘There’s nothing I can say that will make the situation right,’ he explained) amid calls for his impeachment and pressure from Congress. And who was it that brokered the arms deal? One Adnan Khashoggi.
In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland accused of concealing funds. He was swiftly extradited to the US on charges of racketeering and fraud, but later cleared by a Federal jury. The damage to his reputation was done though and the court cases came thick and fast after that. He began defaulting on debts and in the early Nineties his empire and obscene lifestyle quickly unravelled. (In 1998, for example, he settled one £10m gambling bill racked up during a three-month spree in 1986 at the Ritz Casino in London.)
Khashoggi with his second wife, Lamia
Now 80, Adnan Khashoggi is still with us. Word has it he ekes out a modest life in Monaco with just $400m to his name. He was implicated in a money laundering scam in 2011 and was allegedly consulted by the US government on the 2003 Iraq invasion, but his profile has all but evaporated. Those who played a role in his life – ex-house maids, ex-wives, those looking to recoup money – tell their stories in the news far more often than Khashoggi himself.
The long line of tales of court cases and companies trying to recoup money remain. One creditor tried to recoup an 11-year-old debt, plus interest, through the Saudi courts, but lost because interest is banned under Sharia. It seems Khashoggi may have retained some of his luck at least.
Years after the night at the golf club, the idea of the untouched basement, the time capsule of Khashoggi’s fame, still hadn’t left me. I got in touch with the owners of the estate in Marbella, who agreed to show me around.
I was led down a staircase that spiralled deep into a hall of mirrors. Ahead was a stage and a dance floor surrounded by velvet sofas, and I was filled with a sense of awe and ghoulishness as I began to realise just how untouched the place really was. The DJ booth, for instance, still had his record collection strewn across the shelves and turntables, while small rooms, into which guests could disappear to find privacy, gathered layers of dust. Past the wine cellar and old hunting trophies was a firing range where human shaped targets still hung at the far end.
But, there my exploration was forced to an abrupt halt by a padded door, shut tight with a huge lever. My hosts told me they had no idea what was back there, no one had ever opened it. Beyond the basement’s veneer of decadence, sociability and nods to great violence was something unknowable, something perhaps only Khashoggi had ever really known. Much of the mystery of Adnan Khashoggi remains, perhaps never to be explained.
This article was written by Henry Wilkins for our March/April issue. Subscribe to the magazine here.
Become a Gentleman’s Journal Member?
Like the Gentleman’s Journal? Why not join the Clubhouse, a special kind of private club where members receive offers and experiences from hand-picked, premium brands. You will also receive invites to exclusive events, the quarterly print magazine delivered directly to your door and your own membership card.
Further reading
The American Issue: Editor’s Letter
With Wheely, treat her to a bespoke, hand-delivered bouquet this Mother’s Day
The definitive ranking of James Bond actors
- Thunderball (film) Vehicles
- Villain Ships
- SPECTRE Vehicles
- Never Say Never Again (film) Vehicles
Flying Saucer
- View history
The Flying Saucer was a fictional luxury Superyacht owned by SPECTRE operative Maximillian Largo . The vessel was featured in the unofficial 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again and was based on the Disco Volante (from Italian meaning "Flying Saucer") hydrofoil from Ian Fleming 's 1962 novel Thunderball and its 1965 official film adaptation of the same name .
- 1 Appearance
- 3 Behind the scenes
- 6 References
Appearance [ ]
The Flying Saucer is a fictional luxury Superyacht owned by millionaire philanthropist and SPECTRE operative Maximillian Largo . The vessel is utilized as his mobile headquarters during the organization's scheme to steal two cruise missiles and their nuclear warheads; intending to extort billions of dollars from NATO governments. During the course of the operation, the Flying Saucer is first active in the Bahamas , before mooring in Nice , France . It is there that intelligence operatives James Bond and Felix Leiter attempt to board the motor yacht in search of the missing warheads. Treated as Largo's guest, Bond finds the millionaire's mistress, Domino and attempts to make Largo jealous by kissing her in front of a two way mirror. Largo becomes enraged, traps Bond and takes him and Domino to Palmyra , his base of operations in North Africa. He subsequently collects the second warhead from Palmyra and sets sail for the Ethiopian Coast, where he utilizes the vessel's underwater hatch to covertly deploy scuba divers from the ship - transporting the bomb to the Tears of Allah , a fragile location below a desert oasis.
Gadgets [ ]
Behind the scenes [ ].
The Kingdom 5KR.
For Never Say Never Again , the unofficial film adaptation of the novel Thunderball and its source material, the villains' hydrofoil yacht was re-imagined as a luxury superyacht and was renamed The Flying Saucer (the English translation of the Italian name Disco Volante used in the source novel). The 282-foot yacht that was used in long shots for the film was known as the Nabila and was built for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi . The yacht was later sold to Donald Trump , who renamed it Trump Princess . The boat, now owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal , has subsequently been renamed the Kingdom 5KR . [2] These days Kingdom 5KR can usually be found in Antibes, France or cruising the French Riviera during the summer months.
Gallery [ ]
See also [ ]
- Disco Volante
Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi arms merchant and world-class playboy, dies
Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi middleman-for-hire who amassed huge wealth and influence peddling everything from American weapons to favors for Riyadh’s rulers and CIA spymasters, only to see his fortunes collapse amid the Iran-contra affair and other scandals, died June 6 at a hospital in London. He was 81, by most accounts.
The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, the family said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.
Mr. Khashoggi’s name may have lost its luster since his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but not so the list of misdeeds and abuses that remain defining events of the time. Though never convicted, the U.S.-educated Mr. Khashoggi was linked, as a money-mover and five-star fixer, with some of the era’s most infamous figures and schemes.
At the same time, he moved seamlessly between covert shadows and dazzling opulence — a lifestyle estimated by the Economist in 1987 to cost $250,000 a day. He partied with the Hollywood elite such as Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor; traveled in a blinged-out DC-8 jet; kept an Indian swami as an on-call adviser; and boasted about his bevy of young mistresses.
This was grade-A fodder for tabloids and gossip magazines years before Mr. Khashoggi's nephew Dodi al-Fayed riveted the world's attention with his brief and tragic romance with Princess Diana.
Mr. Khashoggi's swashbuckling career and personal indulgences were underwritten by international weapons trade — of which he took a healthy commission — and other forays well off the books: funneling weapons to Iran and elsewhere; working as a private Saudi envoy; and forging bonds with former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, amid accusations that they fled the country in 1986 with looted riches.
Mr. Khashoggi, meanwhile, was building a business empire that included resorts in Kenya, shipping lines in East Asia and an office complex in Salt Lake City that was left partially built.
“There are skeletons hidden behind skeletons in the Khashoggi closet,” Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based defense analyst specializing in Persian Gulf affairs, said in an interview. “No history of the region can be written without hearing them rattle.”
For his 50th birthday in 1985, Mr. Khashoggi threw a five-day bacchanal at his retreat in southern Spain. The cake was topped by a spun-sugar crown modeled after one worn by France’s Sun King, Louis XIV, and guests roamed the grounds with flutes of Moët Champagne among imported African wildlife.
At another villa, near Cannes — one of more than a dozen homes he once owned across four continents — Mr. Khashoggi provided a haven-for-rent for the ousted Haitian ruler Jean-Claude Duvalier after he was driven from his Caribbean nation in 1986.
The mix of hedonism, power and audacity swirling about Mr. Khashoggi was so heady that the British rock band Queen wrote a song about it, "Khashoggi's Ship," referring to his 281-foot yacht outfitted with a laser that sketched its owner's smiling image in the main cabin. The vessel would eventually end up with Donald Trump, who called Mr. Khashoggi "a great broker and a lousy businessman."
Journalist Ronald Kessler, author of the 1986 book “The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi,” described Mr. Khashoggi as a scalpel-sharp strategist. “Even at these fantastic parties, he’s working, doing deals,” Kessler told People magazine at the time. “He’s thinking, ‘Who’s important, who might help me with this or that?’ A deal is like a big hunt for him.”
It all unraveled for Mr. Khashoggi — or A.K., as he liked to be called — in equally spectacular fashion.
He was named, along with Iran-contra pointman Oliver North and others, as a key intermediary in the clandestine CIA-directed plan in the 1980s to send arms to Tehran in exchange for captives held by pro-Iranian militias in Lebanon. The Iranian money was then shifted to U.S.-backed contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of codes including Congress-imposed limits on aid to the contras.
Mr. Khashoggi was not charged in the Iran-contra dealings. But his fingerprints cropped up in many other shady places.
He was accused of bankrolling some of the Iran-contra arms purchases through the Luxembourg-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International , which collapsed in 1991 amid probes into widespread money laundering. In the United States, Mr. Khashoggi was mentioned by investigators on the fringes of the contract-for-kickbacks scandal around Wedtech , whose downfall also led to the resignation of prominent officials such as then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III in 1988.
The following year, Mr. Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland on U.S. charges linked to accusations of helping the Marcos family conceal more than $200 million in cash and artwork allegedly stolen during Ferdinand Marcos’s presidency from 1965 to 1986. While awaiting extradition, Mr. Khashoggi had his jailhouse meals catered by the luxury Schweizerhof Hotel in Bern.
Mr. Khashoggi faced trial on racketeering and other charges. But he and Imelda Marcos, then a widow, were acquitted in U.S. federal court in New York in 1990. Jurors appeared swayed by contentions that Imelda Marcos knew nothing of alleged wrongdoing and that Mr. Khashoggi broke no American laws.
He then faded into a gilded twilight: living comfortably in Saudi Arabia and Monaco but shunned by the executives and political bigwigs who once clamored for his let’s-make-a-deal skills.
Even well into his 70s, he pitched himself as a seen-it-all consultant unburdened by regrets.
“Where did I go wrong?” he told the New York Times in an interview while trying to drum up clients in Cairo in 2009. “Nowhere.”
Then, just a hint of enigmatic contrition: “Okay, I behaved unethically, for ethical reasons.”
Dealmaker from an early age
Adnan Mohamed Khashoggi, born in Mecca on July 25, 1935 (according to most biographies), had advantages from the beginning.
His father was the personal doctor of King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the first ruler of the young Saudi kingdom. Mr. Khashoggi was sent to a top boarding school, Victoria College, in Alexandria, then a cosmopolitan enclave on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Mr. Khashoggi met the father of an Egyptian classmate whose family ran a textile company. The father of another school chum wanted to sell towels and sheets in Libya. Mr. Khashoggi arranged a meeting and earned a commission worth about $200. “That made me feel it’s only [by] putting people together [that] you make money,” he later quipped.
After he graduated in 1952, Mr. Khashoggi enrolled at the Colorado School of Mines to study engineering, but he disliked the cold. He transferred to California State University at Chico, then had a brief stint at Stanford University. His real passion, however, was shepherding deals.
He pulled together a key one: an exclusive contract to export American trucks to Saudi Arabia in the early 1960s, pulling in $150,000 in commissions over several months. He soon was the Saudi conduit for automakers such as Rolls-Royce, Chrysler and Fiat.
He branched out to defense and aviation firms eager for a share of the kingdom's oil-fueled spending spree. Lockheed, Northrop, McDonnell Douglas and others joined his client list, bringing Mr. Khashoggi millions of dollars in fees. According to various accounts, his Rolodex by the late 1960s contained CIA operatives, Swiss bankers, gun runners and Washington insiders such as Nixon confidant Charles "Bebe" Rebozo .
By 1980, Mr. Khashoggi was the intermediary for up to 80 percent of the military purchases by Riyadh. He had other high-level connections in the wings, too.
From 1954 to 1956, his sister Samira was married to Mohamed al-Fayed, an Egyptian-born business magnate whose later holdings included Harrods department store in London and the Hotel Ritz in Paris. (Their son Dodi died in 1997 in Paris, along with Diana and driver Henri Paul in a tunnel crash.)
It was widely assumed that best-selling author Harold Robbins used Mr. Khashoggi as inspiration for his 1974 novel “The Pirate,” about a Middle Eastern mogul with a ruthless streak.
As Mr. Khashoggi grew in stature and riches, he also came under scrutiny. In 1975, he was drawn into a Senate investigation of alleged bribes and other favors by U.S. companies to foreign governments.
Meanwhile, his home life was coming unmoored after having five children with his British-born wife, Sandra Jarvis-Daly, who converted to Islam and took the name Soraya after their marriage in 1962. They divorced in 1979, after having split years earlier amid rumors of Mr. Khashoggi's numerous affairs. Soraya Khashoggi had her own flings, including with actor Warren Beatty, former British lawmaker Jonathan Aitken, and the namesake grandson of former British prime minister Winston Churchill.
Even before their divorce was final, Mr. Khashoggi had remarried — this time to an Italian teenager, Laura Biancolini, who also converted to Islam and took the name Lamia. They had a son.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Khashoggi was so awash with commissions and moneymaking projects that he was often called the world’s richest man. He wasn’t — his net worth was about $4 billion at its peak in the mid-1980s, according to estimates. But he lived as if he were.
His yacht, the Nabila, named for his only daughter, was a floating pleasure palace and used in the 1983 James Bond film “Never Say Never Again” starring Sean Connery — an occasional guest at Mr. Khashoggi’s soirees.
As the Iran-contra affair unfolded, however, Mr. Khashoggi’s star began to dim.
Suddenly, no one returned his calls, and the cash spigots dried up. The Nabila was seized by the sultan of Brunei in 1987 for an unpaid loan. It was then sold to Trump for $29 million in 1988. He unloaded it several years later to Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal at a substantial loss.
In January 1987, Mr. Khashoggi was on the Time magazine cover alongside the headline, "Those Shadowy Arms Traders." Weeks later, his U.S. subsidiary, Triad American, filed for bankruptcy , leaving investors holding the bag and projects unfinished, such as a $400 million office and hotel complex in Salt Lake City.
Survivors include his six children. Lamia Khashoggi remained active in charity events. In the early 1990s, Mr. Khashoggi took a second wife, Iranian-born Shahpari Zanganeh, under Islamic law. They divorced in 2015.
Even after open-heart surgery, he was trying to get back into the mix. Just two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Khashoggi set up a secret meeting in France between a Saudi tycoon and Bush administration insider Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. According to the New Yorker magazine, the tete-a-tete included brainstorming about ways to cash in on the coming conflict.
“My personal philosophy is I don’t regret matters that happen, good or bad,” Mr. Khashoggi told the New York Times in the 2009 interview. But he was not ambivalent when it came to cash, explaining, “Money is not everything. It’s the means to everything.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story did not mention that Mr. Khashoggi and his his second wife, Shahpari Zanganeh, were divorced in 2015.
Read more Washington Post obituaries
Roger Smith, a star of TV’s ‘77 Sunset Strip,’ dies at 84
Jimmy Piersall, ballplayer whose struggles were portrayed in ‘Fear Strikes Out,’ dies at 87
Manuel Noriega, Panamanian strongman toppled in U.S. invasion, dies at 83
Search in Sur in English
- Marbella - San Pedro
- Estepona - Manilva
- Mijas - Fuengirola
- Benalmadena - Torremolinos
- Malaga City
- Guadalhorce Valley
- Food & Drink
- www.surinenglish.com
- Print Edition
- Classifieds Ads
- Business Guide
Adnan Khashoggi, once king of the Marbella jet set, has died in London
The former billionaire had suffered a stroke.
Héctor Barbotta
Friday, 9 June 2017, 15:50
Copiar enlace
In the 1980s Adnan Khashoggi was considered the king of the Marbella jet set and the lavish parties he threw at his residence in Benahavís and on board his megayacht Nabila were legendary, but his departure from the town bore none of the glamour of those golden years.
The enormous 900-hectare estate on which he had built his home was embargoed by three banks; it was eventually acquired by a group of Spanish, Swiss, German and American investors and is now the prestigious La Zagaleta residential development, which is considered the most luxurious in Europe.
His yacht did not fare much better. It too was eventually sold and, after being used in the James Bond film Never Say Never, was bought by Donald Trump.
Khashoggi was born in Mecca in 1935 and became a billionaire at an early age after seeing an opportunity as an arms dealer in the conflicts in the Middle East.
Thanks to his contacts, he was able to act as an intermediary between weapons manufacturers in the west and governments in the region, but his downfall came when he was jailed for money laundering. He retired to Riyadh, but spent time in different European cities until last year, when he suffered a stroke. He died in London on Tuesday.
- 1 Wild boar filmed happily wandering through streets past shops and restaurants in Malaga city
- 2 Can community swimming pools be filled with water from tanker lorries in Malaga and on the Costa del Sol?
- 3 Malaga megayacht marina puts up the 'full' sign
- 4 Junta injects cash to squeeze last possible drop of usable water out of main reservoir that serves the Costa del Sol
- 5 Malaga prisoner to be pardoned and released from jail early during Holy Week tradition
- 6 Spain must navigate 'group of death' to reach Davis Cup Final 8 in Malaga
- 7 Popular Axarquía town in the running for prestigious national tourism award, and this is how you can vote for it
Te puede interesar
Los tres alimentos que hay que comer a partir de los 70 años
El SEPE informa: estos son los requisitos que debes cumplir para recibir las ayudas para parados de entre 30 y 60 años
La Voz de Cádiz
El origen del mito de Genarín y los cuatro evangelistas
Leonoticias
Esta es la palabra española que más dudas ortográficas genera y la resolución que da la RAE
John Cobra, excandidato a Eurovisión, llega al Centro de Inserción Social de Valencia para cumplir una condena por lesiones
Las Provincias
Necesitas ser suscriptor para poder responder.
Necesitas ser suscriptor para poder votar.
Reporta un error en esta noticia
* Campos obligatorios
- Skip to main content
- Keyboard shortcuts for audio player
Saudi Billionaire Arms Dealer Adnan Khashoggi Dies
Adnan Khashoggi had billions of dollars, much of it made by arms deals between Saudi Arabia and American weapons companies. He died Tuesday at age 81.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Saudi Arabia, the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi has died. His name was familiar to many people in the 1980s. That's when his arms business helped make him one of the richest men in the world.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The trade also brought him notoriety. He was a figure in the biggest political scandal of the 1980s. It was called the Iran-Contra affair - the Reagan administration's effort to trade weapons for hostages. Adnan Khashoggi was named as a middleman.
MARTIN: He was also famous for his lifestyle. This included lavish parties on a yacht that was 282 feet long. That's a boat nearly the size of a football field - really big. It was featured in a James Bond movie. And it was later owned, for a time, by one Donald J. Trump who renamed it the Princess Trump - rather, the Trump Princess.
INSKEEP: Khashoggi's yacht was even famous enough to get its own song by the band Queen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KHASHOGGI'S SHIP")
QUEEN: (Singing) And then we took a holiday on Khashoggi's ship. Well, we really had a good, good time...
INSKEEP: Adnan Khashoggi has died at 81.
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Saudi Billionaire Arms Dealer Adnan Khashoggi Dies
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Saudi Arabia, the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi has died. His name was familiar to many people in the 1980s. That's when his arms business helped make him one of the richest men in the world.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The trade also brought him notoriety. He was a figure in the biggest political scandal of the 1980s. It was called the Iran-Contra affair - the Reagan administration's effort to trade weapons for hostages. Adnan Khashoggi was named as a middleman.
MARTIN: He was also famous for his lifestyle. This included lavish parties on a yacht that was 282 feet long. That's a boat nearly the size of a football field - really big. It was featured in a James Bond movie. And it was later owned, for a time, by one Donald J. Trump who renamed it the Princess Trump - rather, the Trump Princess.
INSKEEP: Khashoggi's yacht was even famous enough to get its own song by the band Queen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KHASHOGGI'S SHIP")
QUEEN: (Singing) And then we took a holiday on Khashoggi's ship. Well, we really had a good, good time...
INSKEEP: Adnan Khashoggi has died at 81. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Jedan lepši svet 🌍
Adnan Khashoggi – The One Who Dared To Dream
Portrait, legacy, the paris days and an interview with his grandson spartan, who spoke publicly about his grandfather for the first time. in addition, take a look at khashoggi’s never-before-published photographs..
If the Russian Basil Zakharov was the richest man in the world and the largest arms dealer in the first half of the 20th century. In the second half that was Adnan Kashogi, taking the title from Zakharov. Khashoggi ’s life reads like something out of A Thousand and One Nights . He was never officially confirmed as one of the richest people in the world but his way of life convinced many that he was. The rumor in the 1980s was that his wealth
Khashoggi’s multinational corporation, Triad, was one of the most powerful companies in the world. He linked Saudi Arabia with the West and saved the US military giant, Lockheed Martin, from bankruptcy. He was involved in the Iran-Contra affair as a key figure in the exchange of weapons for hostages, and was arrested in 1988 in Geneva on the suspicion he was concealing funds for Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos who had defrauded the Philippines for some 150 million Euro.
The Triad Corporation
On top of ten private planes, he also owned three super-yachts – Mohammadia, Khalida, and Nabila, named after his children. The last, almost 90 meter-long yacht, was bought by none other than Donald Trump, who renamed it into Trump Princess. It was used during the filming of the James Bond film Never Say Never. The yacht was equipped to the nines – a pool, disco club, cinema, a helipad, and a 70-man crew.
Khashoggi was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1935. His father was a personal doctor to Saudi King Ibn Saud, a position which came with many privileges. Attending an English-language university in Egypt, where the future elites of the Middle East were educated, Khashoggi studied alongside future kings of Iraq and Jordan – Faisal II and Hussein. Everything pointed to him studying petrochemistry and he majored in mining in Colorado, but at the age of 26 he got involved in the arms business – a decision which will eventually lead him to the front page of the Time magazine.
In business, he relied on a typical Arab-Islamic mix of cunning, loyalty, risk, and generosity. Business, love, diplomacy, all in one. He did not accept the then-typical methods of business and connections, so he became an international symbol of bringing people together, the most successful businessmen and beautiful women.
Jovan Matovic, Lieutenant General and banker, led the efforts to create a programme for airplane manufacturing, and he also chaired a commission for military and technical cooperation with a number of countries. He had visited over 60 of them, directly working with heads of state and government. He would run into Khashoggi in business meetings in Italy, Monte Carlo, Cannes and Paris, but also Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Brijuni, and often in Belgrade.
According to the late Matovic, Khashoggi did not take much note of institutions and advisory groups, although he was always prepared to listen to what they had to say. He dealt with people on a personal level, very much an atypical administrator. For him, what mattered were people and he worked on instinct only.
The first meeting took place in the Yugoslavian capital in the 80s, initiated by the federal directorate which wanted to learn the secrets for conquering the international marked. Banks, military companies, and other important figures in Yugoslavia were also interested in contacting him. He arrived on his DC9 plane, and found accommodations in the 23 Uzicka Street, in the Federal Government villa.
How powerful Khashoggi was is obvious in the fact that he bought out Soviet debt to Yugoslavia, that Yugoslavia would make an arms delivery treaty with the USSR. After the negotiations in Belgrade, our delegation met with Khashoggi in the Spanish city of Marbella. Khashoggi welcomed them to his enormous house, some 15 kilometres outside the city.
Khashoggi birthday party in Marbella
The first thing that our delegation led by Matovic could see was a huge gate, like the one in the Buckingham Palace, and behind it stretched a 900-hectare property. On the one side is a stable of thoroughbred Arabian horses, on the other a heliport, and in the middle Khashoggi and his wife Lamia, one of the most beautiful women in the world at the time, who was called Laura Biancolini before converting to Islam.
Inside, the walls are covered with his photographs with famous and powerful people, Reagan, Pope Wojtyla, Kissinger, Nixon. Khashoggi used to change his clothes several times during the day, depending on whom he met. Arabian gabay for the Middle East, western suits with herringbone pattern for magnates from America and Europe.
Unlike today’s highly secretive conception of the arms trade, every step was recorded in the former Yugoslavia, which made business far more transparent, but not completely public of course. Hence, many high-ranking officials did not start building castles after the end of their careers. In addition to control, there was a serious business morale. Matovic’s documents confirms that.
The beginning of the cooperation was crowned with Adnan’s invitation to celebrate his 53rd birthday. The degree of eccentricity is clearly visible from the photos.
The gala evening has a touch of modesty when it comes to Khashoggi. A triumphal arch of flowers, a swimming pool, red carpets, Lamia in a Saint Laurent dress that cost „trivial“ $100,000, and on which a label was sewn: „In memory of Van Gogh’s painting Iris“. It’s no secret that Khashoggi’s day cost around $ 250,000, so the nickname „The Great Gatsby of the Middle East“ was not at all pompous.
Lamia, beautiful as a goddess, dressed as a princess, or Marie Antoinette, with diamonds and rubies. The birthday was attended by movie star George Hamilton (from whom Kashogi’s daughter Nabila later bought a house in Beverly Hills for $7 million), Prince Ferdinand von Bismarck, his first wife Soraya, in the company of an Arab prince, whom Matovic wanted to meet for the sake of arms sales.
But there was only one small problem. All the princes were placed on one part of the podium. Since Matovic did not belong to the aristocracy, he asked the head of his protocol, Toza, to present him half jokingly, half in reality as Prince of Miljevina (where he was born) and Marquis of Herzegovina in the rank of lieutenant general of the Yugoslav army. In that way, he still spent the evening with the most powerful people in the world, as a representative of a small country. And not only that, he eventually sold the weapon to the Arab prince.
Second time in Marbella, mystery of clairvoyant Hindu solved
The last time the delegation was with Matovic was in this fashionable summer resort in 1988, where, after visiting the Gibraltar, they were invited to celebrate the New Year’s Eve. The Yugoslavs, as people, had an honorary place, because they certainly could not achieve that with their status and money among the richest people on the planet. That year, Saudi King Fahd came to Marbella for the first time and built a mosque there, designed by Kavro.
Then, Khashoggi revealed to them that in one part of his palace there was a living Hindu, Swaili Maharaj, a prophet, when they considered him a saint and a psychic. This soon became crystal clear to Matovic, as he approached him and told him two things that only he knew: „In all the matters in which you did not obey your wife, you were wrong not to, correct that.“ The second thing he said was: „You will live to be about 88.“ He guessed everything.
When the delegation returned to Belgrade, Matovic told everything to Branko Mikulic, the president of the Federal Executive Council, who said that they „brought that saint to Belgrade,“ which was true. He told Matovic in confidence that Mikulic would not be in that position for long and that he would not live long. Matovic never told him that, but the prophet’s words were nothing but prophetic.
Later, Zeljko Kristofic, a mutual friend of Matovic and Khashoggi, said that the Maharaja foretold the fate of Nixon, Mubarak, the Saudi king, Francois Mitterrand and others. He prophesied everything to everyone exactly as it happened, and after that, Khashoggi brought him to his residence and he did not start any business without consulting him.
Perhaps a clairvoyant was the missing x factor necessary for our arms trade to reach the heights of Khashoggi – whom Donald Trump called „a great broker but a bad businessman and investor.“
Meeting in Brijuni, Baden Baden and Mobutu Sese Seko
The Brijuni meeting with Kashoggi in 1987 was interesting because he was interested in turning a part of Brijuni into a luxury casino, so a year later he met with Mikulic, who hosted him in Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Brijuni, and came with his yacht, Khalidia.
When he saw the Vanga island, he said: „I have seen many royal resorts, but such beauty and luxury is nowhere else to be found“, so he asked our management to recommend experts who were in charge of taking care of the residence, so that they could tend to his parks and villas, 12 of them all over the world, scattered from Jeddah, Riyadh, to Geneva and Florida. Most of those employed, mainly already retired, thanked him for the offer, holding their glass of wine, with a smile on their faces.
At the meeting in Baden Baden, not far from the Black Forest under which the Danube springs, Kashoggi introduced the business world of Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Peru and Libya to Yugoslavia.
The deal with Zaire and the meeting with Mobutu in Monte Carlo was also organized by Kashoggi. “Luxury residences are common in Monte Carlo, but Mobutu’s… I compared that splendour to the lives of people in Zaire. I am convinced that there is no ideology that could equalize the living conditions among people. Everything a man tailors, he tailors it to himself, and sews a suit for himself,“ Matovic said.
Another interesting detail could be seen at the meeting in Cannes, where a plan was discussed to establish a joint company in Yugoslavia from the existing companies Geneks, SCT Ljubljana, Energoinvest. During lunch in the richly decorated salon of his house overlooking the sea, he got a call from Paris, Adnan apologized and immediately flew to Charles de Gaulle. He returned after three hours, had dinner, and after 45 minutes was already on a plane to Rome. Tony Parsons said that „time is the most expensive thing in the world“ for a reason.
Paris days with his grandson Spartan
I spoke with his his grandson Spartan, and he recalled a number of interesting details for the first time. The younger Khashoggi is a classical pianist (especially the performances of Maurice Ravel), having inherited his love of music from his grandfather, and he lives in Los Angeles. He is planning to start work on his first movie in Italy.
Adnan Khashoggi spent the last few years of his live with his grandson in Monte Carlo and Paris. “There are so many intimate memories, stories. We ate lunch and dinner together almost every day. He was my best friend. In those years he was suffering from Parkinson’s and I had to be with him, just the two of use for two full years. I hope to make a movie about our days in Paris,” Spartan said. He added that they couldn’t step out onto the street without someone coming up to Adnan to say hello.
“He was the first Arab to appear in the West, in Marbella, who was that successful. When we buried him Medina, I went back to London and I was approached by a young Kuwaiti who recognized me and told me that every Arab knows a story about my grandfather. That made him the Great Gatsby of that part of the world, larger than life,” Spartan said.
According to Spartan, Adnan wanted to live out his final days in Paris. During a vacation in Monaco, the family asked him if he wanted to live in Rome, Monte Carlo or London. He just said: Paris, that’s my kind of town.
“He was grateful for his family, children, friends. Those relationships meant more than money and fame to him. Jamal, a family friend and successful businessman in Lebanon, came to the Khashoggi house in Cannes for the first time as a kid. He told me that Adnan gave him a lot of attention and personally said goodbye when he was leaving even though he was nobody then. He didn’t have to do that and that shows how important relationship were to him even when he didn’t see interest in them. I never asked him if he regretted anything because his life was so intense, enjoying every moment, that the question was superfluous,” Spartan said.
He said that Adnan was unconditionally generous. “I remember him giving money to a lot of people who would repay him years later and he would just ask – what’s this? That was special to me, the kid from the desert, something he created. Many people abused this. He secretly built some 500 mosques from Morocco to Lebanon to Saudi Arabia and never said anything in public,” he added.
Adnan and Spartan had a routine in Paris. They drank tea with his friends at the Hotel George V, Bristol (where they lived for some time) and the Rasputin where he met former US President Richard Nixon.
“He took me and my friends to dinner and when they were finished he would say let’s go to the Lido or Rasputin. I would laugh and say, grandfather you have to sleep.
“He would always eat (the Lebanese specialty) Za’atar with olive oil and bread and once a week we would eat pasta. He probably drank alcohol when we lived in Cannes but I can only remember him drinking water at that time,” Spartan said.
Towards the end, Khashoggi ’s wealth was slowly dissipating for whatever reason but his myth was not ruined. The Khashoggi complex in Utah worth almost half a billion Dollars was put up for sale, Donald Trump bought the yacht Nabila for 30 million Dollars even though it was worth 70 million. A journalist from Vanity Fair magazine, before publishing an article about the “fall of Khashoggi”, called his number one man of trust, Robert Sheikhin, who quite critically wanted to warn of any negative connotations and conclusions in the future text, so he defiantly stood behind his friend: “He dreamed the dreams no one dared dream”. And turned them into reality.
Plain and simple. Many will continue to dream, eventually to dare as well, but for vast majority of them, it will end up, there, unfortunately, just on dreaming.
Pavle Jakšić
Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/vitrazmagazin/
Follow us: https://www.facebook.com/vitraz.net/
About the author
Adnan Khashoggi’s grandson for N1: Adnan was the first Arab in the West
advertisement
Saudi national Adnan Khashoggi was the top arms dealer in the second half of the 20th century, taking the title from Russian Basil Zaharov who became the richest man on earth through the arms trade in the first half of the century. His grandson Spartan spoke to N1, recalling a number of interesting details.
The younger Khashoggi is a classical pianist – having inherited his love of music from his grandfater – who lives in Los Angeles. He is planning to start work on his first movie in Italy.
Khashoggi ’s life reads like something out of A Thousand and One Nights. He was never officially confirmed as one of the richest people in the world but his way of life convinced many that he was. The rumor in the 1980s was that his wealth reached the level of four billion Dollars but Forbes magazine never confirmed that.
Adnan Khashoggi spent the last few years of his life with his grandson in Monte Carlo and Paris.
“There are so many intimate memories, stories. We ate lunch and dinner together almost every day. He was my best friend. In those years he was suffering from Parkinson’s and I had to be with him, just the two of use for two full years. I hope to make a movie about our days in Paris,” Spartan said.
He added that they couldn’t step out onto the street without someone coming up to Adnan to say hello. He would say later that he couldn’t remember any of the people who came up to him.
“He was the first Arab to appear in the West, in Marbella, who was that successful. When we buried him Medina, I went back to London and I was approached by a young Kuwaiti who recognized me and told me that every Arab knows a story about my grandfather. That made him the Great Gatsby of that part of the world, larger than life,” Spartan said.
According to Spartan, Adnan wanted to live out his final days in Paris. During a vacation in Monaco, the family asked him if he wanted to live in Rome, Monte Carlo or London. He just said: Paris, that’s my kind of town.
“He was grateful for his family, children, friends. Those relationships meant more than money and fame to him. Jamal, a family friend and successful businessman in Lebanon, came to the Khashoggi house in Cannes for the first time as a kid. He told me that Adnan gave him a lot of attention and personally said goodbye when he was leaving even though he was nobody then. He didn’t have to do that and that shows how important relationship were to him even when he didn’t see interest in them. I never asked him if he regretted anything because his life was so intense, enjoying every moment, that the question was superfluous,” Spartan said.
He said that Adnan was unconditionally generous. “I remember him giving money to a lot of people who would repay him years later and he would just ask – what’s this? That was special to me, the kid from the desert, something he created. Many people abused this. He secretly built some 500 mosques from Morocco to Lebanon to Saudi Arabia and never said anything in public,” he added.
Adnan and Spartan had a routine in Paris. They drank tea with his friends at the Hotel George V, Bristol (where they lived for some time) and the Rasputin where he met former US President Richard Nixon several times.
“He took me and my friends to dinner and when they were finished he would say let’s go to the Lido or Rasputin. I would laugh and say, grandfather you have to sleep.
“He would always eat (the Lebanese specialty) Za’atar with olive oil and bread and once a week we would eat pasta. He probably drank alcohol when we lived in Cannes but I can only remember him drinking water at that time,” Spartan said.
Towards the end, Khashoggi ’s wealth was slowly dissipating for whatever reason but his myth was not ruined. The Khashoggi complex in Utah worth almost half a billion Dollars was put up for sale, Donald Trump bought the yacht Nabila for 30 million Dollars even though it was worth 70 million. His close friend Robert Shaheen said of Adnan: He dreamed the dreams no one dared dream.
The Triad Corporation
Khashoggi’s multinational corporation, Triad, was one of the most powerful companies in the world. He linked Saudi Arabia with the West and saved the US military giant, Lockheed Martin, from bankruptcy. He was involved in the Iran-Contra affair as a key figure in the exchange of weapons for hostages, and was arrested in 1988 in Geneva on the suspicion he was concealing funds for Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos who had defrauded the Philippines for some €150 million. On top of ten private planes, he also owned three super-yachts – Mohammadia, Khalida, and Nabila, named after his children. The last, almost 90 meter-long yacht, was bought by none other than Donald Trump, who renamed it into Trump Princess. It was used during the filming of the James Bond film Never Say Never. The yacht was equipped to the nines – a pool, disco club, cinema, a helipad, and a 70-man crew.
Khashoggi was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1935. His father was a personal doctor to Saudi King Ibn Saud, a position which came with many privileges. Attending an English-language university in Egypt, where the future elites of the Middle East were educated, Khashoggi studied alongside future kings of Iraq and Jordan – Faisal II and Hussein. Everything pointed to him studying petrochemistry and he majored in mining in Colorado, but at the age of 26 he got involved in the arms business – a decision which will eventually lead him to the front page of the Time magazine.
In business, he relied on a typical Arab-Islamic mix of cunning, loyalty, risk, and generosity. Business, love, diplomacy, all in one. He did not accept the then-typical methods of business and connections, so he became an international symbol of bringing people together, the most successful businessmen and beautiful women. Jovan Matovic, Lieutenant General and banker, led the efforts to create a programme for airplane manufacturing, and he also chaired a commission for military and technical cooperation with a number of countries. He had visited over 60 of them, directly working with heads of state and government. He would run into Khashoggi in business meetings in Italy, Monte Carlo, Cannes and Paris, but also Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Brijuni, and often in Belgrade.
According to the late Matovic, Khashoggi did not take much note of institutions and advisory groups, although he was always prepared to listen to what they had to say. He dealt with people on a personal level, very much an atypical administrator. For him, what mattered were people and he worked on instinct only. The first meeting took place in the Yugoslavian capital in the 80s, initiated by the federal directorate which wanted to learn the secrets for conquering the international marked. Banks, military companies, and other important figures in Yugoslavia were also interested in contacting him. He arrived on his DC9 plane, and found accommodations in the 23 Uzicka Street, in the Federal Government villa.
How powerful Khashoggi was is obvious in the fact that he bought out Soviet debt to Yugoslavia, that Yugoslavia would make an arms delivery treaty with the USSR. After the negotiations in Belgrade, our delegation met with Khashoggi in the Spanish city of Marbella. Khashoggi welcomed them to his enormous house, some 15 kilometres outside the city.
Khashoggi birthday party in Marbella
The first thing that our delegation led by Matovic could see was a huge gate, like the one in the Buckingham Palace, and behind it stretched a 900-hectare property. On the one side is a stable of thoroughbred Arabian horses, on the other a heliport, and in the middle Khashoggi and his wife Lamia, one of the most beautiful women in the world at the time, who was called Laura Biancolini before converting to Islam. Inside, the walls are covered with his photographs with famous and powerful people, Reagan, Pope Wojtyla, Kissinger, Nixon. Khashoggi used to change his clothes several times during the day, depending on whom he met. Arabian gabay for the Middle East, western suits with herringbone pattern for magnates from America and Europe.
Unlike today’s highly secretive conception of the arms trade, every step was recorded in the former Yugoslavia, which made business far more transparent, but not completely public of course. Hence, many high-ranking officials did not start building castles after the end of their careers. In addition to control, there was a serious business morale. Matovic’s documents confirms that.
The beginning of the cooperation was crowned with Adnan’s invitation to celebrate his 53rd birthday. The degree of eccentricity is clearly visible from the photos. The gala evening has a touch of modesty when it comes to Khashoggi. A triumphal arch of flowers, a swimming pool, red carpets, Lamia in a Saint Laurent dress that cost „trivial“ $100,000, and on which a label was sewn: „In memory of Van Gogh’s painting Iris“. It’s no secret that Khashoggi’s day cost around $ 250,000, so the nickname „The Great Gatsby of the Middle East“ was not at all pompous.
Lamia, beautiful as a goddess, dressed as a princess, or Marie Antoinette, with diamonds and rubies. The birthday was attended by movie star George Hamilton (from whom Kashogi’s daughter Nabila later bought a house in Beverly Hills for $7 million), Prince Ferdinand von Bismarck, his first wife Soraya, in the company of an Arab prince, whom Matovic wanted to meet for the sake of arms sales.
But there was only one small problem. All the princes were placed on one part of the podium. Since Matovic did not belong to the aristocracy, he asked the head of his protocol, Toza, to present him half jokingly, half in reality as Prince of Miljevina (where he was born) and Marquis of Herzegovina in the rank of lieutenant general of the Yugoslav army. In that way, he still spent the evening with the most powerful people in the world, as a representative of a small country. And not only that, he eventually sold the weapon to the Arab prince.
Second time in Marbella, mystery of clairvoyant Hindu solved
The last time the delegation was with Matovic was in this fashionable summer resort in 1988, where, after visiting the Gibraltar, they were invited to celebrate the New Year’s Eve. The Yugoslavs, as people, had an honorary place, because they certainly could not achieve that with their status and money among the richest people on the planet. That year, Saudi King Fahd came to Marbella for the first time and built a mosque there, designed by Kavro.
Then, Khashoggi revealed to them that in one part of his palace there was a living Hindu, Swaili Maharaj, a prophet, when they considered him a saint and a psychic. This soon became crystal clear to Matovic, as he approached him and told him two things that only he knew: „In all the matters in which you did not obey your wife, you were wrong not to, correct that.“ The second thing he said was: „You will live to be about 88.“ He guessed everything.
When the delegation returned to Belgrade, Matovic told everything to Branko Mikulic, the president of the Federal Executive Council, who said that they „brought that saint to Belgrade,“ which was true. He told Matovic in confidence that Mikulic would not be in that position for long and that he would not live long. Matovic never told him that, but the prophet’s words were nothing but prophetic.
Later, Zeljko Kristofic, a mutual friend of Matovic and Khashoggi, said that the Maharaja foretold the fate of Nixon, Mubarak, the Saudi king, Francois Mitterrand and others. He prophesied everything to everyone exactly as it happened, and after that, Khashoggi brought him to his residence and he did not start any business without consulting him.
Perhaps a clairvoyant was the missing x factor necessary for our arms trade to reach the heights of Khashoggi – whom Donald Trump called „a great broker but a bad businessman and investor.“
Meeting in Brijuni
The Brijuni meeting with Kashoggi in 1987 was interesting because he was interested in turning a part of Brijuni into a luxury casino, so a year later he met with Mikulic, who hosted him in Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Brijuni, and came with his yacht, Khalidia.
When he saw the Vanga island, he said: „I have seen many royal resorts, but such beauty and luxury is nowhere else to be found“, so he asked our management to recommend experts who were in charge of taking care of the residence, so that they could tend to his parks and villas, 12 of them all over the world, scattered from Jeddah, Riyadh, to Geneva and Florida. Most of those employed, mainly already retired, thanked him for the offer, holding their glass of wine, with a smile on their faces. At the meeting in Baden Baden, not far from the Black Forest under which the Danube springs, Kashoggi introduced the business world of Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Peru and Libya to Yugoslavia.
The deal with Zaire and the meeting with Mobutu in Monte Carlo was also organized by Kashoggi. “Luxury residences are common in Monte Carlo, but Mobutu’s… I compared that splendour to the lives of people in Zaire. I am convinced that there is no ideology that could equalize the living conditions among people. Everything a man tailors, he tailors it to himself, and sews a suit for himself,“ Matovic said.
Another interesting detail could be seen at the meeting in Cannes, where a plan was discussed to establish a joint company in Yugoslavia from the existing companies Geneks, SCT Ljubljana, Energoinvest. During lunch in the richly decorated salon of his house overlooking the sea, he got a call from Paris, Adnan apologized and immediately flew to Charles de Gaulle. He returned after three hours, had dinner, and after 45 minutes was already on a plane to Rome. Tony Parsons said that „time is the most expensive thing in the world“ for a reason.
Kakvo je tvoje mišljenje o ovome?
Budi prvi koji će ostaviti komentar!
Popular Posts
Drazen Petrovic and Toni Kukoc voted members of All-Time NBA European 2nd Team
Plenkovic confident about HDZ victory, talks about possible cooperation after the election
Milanovic on Facebook: Croatian border sacred; Grmoja: border is not guarded by status on social networks
Local media: Businesses had to pay back €44m received in Covid salary subsidies
India Votes 2024
A decade under Modi: Rising unemployment, declining wages, poor quality jobs
‘Ae Watan Mere Watan’ review: An overly sincere tribute to a rebellion via radi
Thriller: A foreign couple with powerful connections is abducted while trekking in the Kumaon
Seven firms that failed drug quality tests gave money to political parties through electoral bonds
India moving towards a ‘quasi autocracy’: TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai at media company’s conclave
Why Zomato’s ‘pure veg’ service is being criticised as casteist
Not just electoral bonds, the BJP is biggest beneficiary of all forms of political finance
‘So comfortable on bended knees it hurts to stand up:’ Newspaper editor on ‘a few’ media owners
‘Where will the poor go?’: Madhya Pradesh is trying to privatise government hospitals – again
Electoral bonds: What we know so far, what we will know soon – and what we may never know
Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi dies at 82 in London
He was once touted to be one of the richest men in the world and his wealth was estimated at £2.4 billion..
Billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who earned hefty commissions by brokering deals between countries, died on Tuesday night in London at the age of 82, BBC reported. He had been undergoing treatment for Parkinson’s disease, his family said in a statement.
Khashoggi is survived by his wife. “AK was a pioneer who achieved global recognition in a golden age through his extraordinary business achievements and renowned generosity,” the family’s statement said. “He combined commercial acumen with an over-riding loyalty to his country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His work always furthered the interests of his country.”
At the age of 21, Khashoggi enrolled at Chico State College in California when he brokered his first major deal. He sold trucks worth $3 million to Egypt for which he received a commission of $150,000, reported The New York Times . After that, Khashoggi never returned to college for his degree.
Khashoggi, who was once said to be one of the richest men in the world, was known for his lavish lifestyle and glamorous parties. His wealth was once estimated at £2.4 billion (Rs 23,623 crore approximately), reported AFP . He had brokered the arms deals between the United States firms and Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 1970s. He also once owned one of the world’s largest yachts, Nabila, which appeared in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again . Khashoggi was friends with self-styled godman Chandraswami, who was also his on-call adviser , reported AFP .
Khashoggi’s fortunes started collapsing after he got involved in high-profile scandals. Khashoggi had to sell Nabila and private DC9 airliner once his business started running into financial difficulties. In the 1980s, he had handed over his yacht to the Sultan of Brunei who then had sold it to now-US President Donald Trump for $29 million (Rs 180 crore approximately), BBC reported. Nabila was then renamed Trump Princess.
In 1997, Khashoggi was charged with smuggling 37 paintings into France and was ordered to pay a $1.6 million fine (Rs 10 crore approximately). In 1998, Ritz Hotel’s casino in London had opted for an out-of-court settlement for its lawsuit against Khashoggi for £8 million (Rs 78 crore approximately) of gambling debts.
- Adnan Khashoggi
- Saudi Arabia
- arms dealer
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
The yacht was built in 1980 by the yacht builder Benetti at a cost of $100 million (equivalent to $355 million in 2022). Its original interior was designed by Luigi Sturchio. She was originally built as Nabila for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi (named for his daughter).
Adnan Khashoggi (Arabic: عدنان ... His yacht, the Nabila, was the largest in the world at the time and was used in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. After Khashoggi ran into financial problems he sold the yacht to the Sultan of Brunei, ...
Adnan Khashoggi and the 86m superyacht Nabila that nearly broke a shipyard. Famed for his lavish lifestyle that garnered him a reputation as the "richest man in the world" during the 1980s, Adnan Khashoggi pushed decadence to new levels with the build of 86-metre Nabila. Sophia Wilson discovers how the flamboyant Saudi arms trader shaped ...
This time it was the turn of the Benetti superyacht Nabila, built for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and later sold to Donald Trump, to take centre stage. At 86m long, this can lay claim to being the largest James Bond boat so far by quite some distance, and at the time of filming it held the honour of being the world's largest private yacht.
Built in 1980 by Italian yacht builder Benetti at a cost of $291million (2016 equivalent), the 86 meter long Nabila had a starring role in Sean Connery's final outing as agent 007. The original owner of the luxury yacht was Saudi billionaire and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi who died today aged 81. He had famously made the news after being ...
Khashoggi's famous yacht, the Nabila (named for his daughter), cost $80m and boasted a disco with laser beams that projected Khashoggi's face, 11 (that number again) guest rooms, on-board hospital ...
In the Bond film Never Say Never Again, the ship was used as the nerve centre for an international criminal mastermind. By the mid-Eighties, Khashoggi's property empire included 12 homes spread across the world: Cannes, Paris, Madrid, London, and, of course, Marbella. In New York he bought 16 flats and knocked them together into one vast ...
The vessel was featured in the unofficial 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again and was based... James Bond Wiki. Explore. Main Page; Discuss; All Pages; ... The 282-foot yacht that was used in long shots for the film was known as the Nabila and was built for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. The yacht was later sold to Donald Trump, who ...
One of his luxury yachts, the 282-foot Nabila, was considered the most opulent modern yacht afloat and was borrowed for a James Bond movie. He even sold Donald Trump one of his 285-foot luxury super yachts for $200 million, although it is now in the hands of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.
Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi arms merchant and world-class playboy, dies ... His yacht, the Nabila, named for his only daughter, was a floating pleasure palace and used in the 1983 James Bond film ...
His yacht did not fare much better. It too was eventually sold and, after being used in the James Bond film Never Say Never, was bought by Donald Trump. Khashoggi was born in Mecca in 1935 and became a billionaire at an early age after seeing an opportunity as an arms dealer in the conflicts in the Middle East.
Built in 1975 by Denizcilik, it comes with a length of 128 ft (40 m), offering enough room to sleep ten guests in five staterooms and nine crew members. Two Deutz engines take it to a top speed of ...
Adnan Khashoggi's life was an eighties remake of The Thousand and One Nights. The rumors started during the Iran-contra scandal, and the Saudi arms dealer once touted as the richest man in the ...
Khashoggi's yacht, the Nabila, was the largest in the world at the time, and was used in the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again." He was "unique," said Al-Omeir. "There was only ...
The 2006 Bond film Casino Royale featured the villain Le Chiffre, who owned this 45-knot superyacht. In the movie, he plays poker onboard in the Bahamas. Two fun trivia facts are related to the flick. Firstly, a subsequent owner of the yacht christened her Casino Royale, in honor of the role. Secondly, this was the first of several Bond films to feature Sunseeker boats and yachts.
Saudi Billionaire Arms Dealer Adnan Khashoggi Dies ... a yacht that was 282 feet long. That's a boat nearly the size of a football field - really big. It was featured in a James Bond movie. ...
Adnan Khashoggi was named as a middleman. MARTIN: He was also famous for his lifestyle. This included lavish parties on a yacht that was 282 feet long. That's a boat nearly the size of a football field - really big. It was featured in a James Bond movie.
The last, almost 90 meter-long yacht, was bought by none other than Donald Trump, who renamed it into Trump Princess. It was used during the filming of the James Bond film Never Say Never. The yacht was equipped to the nines - a pool, disco club, cinema, a helipad, and a 70-man crew. Khashoggi was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1935.
Khashoggi once owned one of the world's largest yachts, the 86-meter Nabila, which appeared in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. The yacht also was the subject of Khashoggi's Ship, a 1989 ...
The last, almost 90 meter-long yacht, was bought by none other than Donald Trump, who renamed it into Trump Princess. It was used during the filming of the James Bond film Never Say Never. The yacht was equipped to the nines - a pool, disco club, cinema, a helipad, and a 70-man crew. Khashoggi was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1935.
Billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, ... which appeared in the James Bond film Never Say ... he had handed over his yacht to the Sultan of Brunei who then had sold it to now-US President ...