Adnan Khashoggi was born on the 25th July 1935, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and is a businessman including an arms dealer, widely known for arranging arms deals between the USA and Saudi Arabia, as well as for collaborating with companies such as Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Lockheed Corporation and Northrop Corporation. Adnan is also a co-founder of Barrick Gold Corporation.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth this businessman has accumulated so far? How rich Adnan Khashoggi is? According to sources, it is estimated that the total of Adnan Khashoggi’s net worth, as of mid-2017, revolves around the sum of $400 million – although in the early 1980s was believed to be over $4 billion – acquired largely through his arm dealing business, which has been active since the 1960s.
Adnan Khashoggi Net Worth $400 million
Adnan was one of four children of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud’s personal doctor Muhammad Khashoggi. Adnan’s sister Soheir is a famous Arab novelist, while Samira is the former wife of Egyptian business magnate Mohamed Al-Fayed. Adnan attended Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, before he enrolled at California State University, and later Stanford University.
Khashoggi entered the arms dealing “market” in the early 1960s, and one of his first deals came in 1963 when, during the Aden Emergency, he supplied British Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling with necessary weapons for a covert mission in Yemen. He rapidly expanded his business, and began collaborating with several top contractors of the arms industry, primarily from the USA including, apart from those already mentioned, aerospace corporation Northrop Grumman, Raytheon as well as Lockheed Martin – the latter collaboration resulted in a dramatic increment of Khashoggi’s net worth with $106 million in paid commissions. By the end of the 1970s, Khashoggi was serving as the main broker in the arms dealing business between the US and Saudi governments. All these successful ventures helped Adnan Khashoggi to build his business empire, as well as to add millions of dollars to his net worth.
In 1983, Khashoggi co-founded Barrick Gold Corporation, and also served as the CEO of the now bankrupted Triad Holding Company, which constructed Salt Lake City’s Triad Center in 1984. During the mid-1980s, Khashoggi was heavily involved in the Iran-Contra affair – a political scandal which occurred during the Reagan Administration’s second term in the White House – when he served as a middleman in an arms-for-hostages situation between the US and Iran. All these were followed by the expansion of Adnan’s business reach into Europe, as he established companies in Lichtenstein and Switzerland. However, he was one of those responsible for the bankruptcy of several other companies in the 1990s, which was crowned with the biggest commission payouts in the history of Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Doubtlessly, all these attainments dramatically impacted Adnan Khashoggi’s net worth – he was even forced to sell his Nabila, 281-foot long luxurious super-yacht which was used during filming the 1983 James Bond movie “Never Say Never Again”. The yacht changed hands several times, such as to the Sultan of Brunei and the current president of the US Donald Trump, before becoming the property of Saudi Prince and business magnate Al-Waleed bin Talal.
When it comes to Adnan Khashoggi’s personal life, it has been asequally thrilling as his business career – in the early 1960s he married 20-year-old Sandra Daly (later renamed to Soraya) with whom he welcomed a daughter and four sons before they divorced, costing him $875 million, the third most costly divorce ever recorded. In 1980, from his marriage with Laura Biancolini, Khashoggi has another son.
At the peak of his power and wealth, Khashoggi is reputed to have spent $250,000 daily to maintain his opulent lifestyle, abundant with lavish parties featuring the top stars from sports, politics and Hollywood. Today, he resides in the Principality of Monaco.
