Secretele armatei. Puterea din umbra by Radu Tudor

He never returned for his college degree. Afterward he enrolled at what was then Chico State College in California.īarely a year after arriving at Chico State, at the age of 21, he brokered his first major deal, the sale of $3 million worth of trucks to Egypt. Khashoggi attended Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, a traditional training ground for the Middle Eastern elite, where pupils were caned for using any language other than English. His father, the court physician to King Ibn Saud, was of Turkish descent, leaving the family outside the web of connections, obligations and suspicions in the Saudi court. Khashoggi was born in the holy city of Mecca on July 25, 1935, one of six children. He flew on commercial jets, fended off creditors and dismissed his bodyguard, a Korean martial arts expert known as Mr. Khashoggi lived well, but in much-reduced circumstances. Its biggest project, a hotel and shopping complex in Salt Lake City, fell victim to what he called “cash flow problems.” His holding company in the United States, Triad America, filed for bankruptcy. Khashoggi, Time magazine said his “unrivaled profligacy gilds his self-image as a grand merchant-statesman.” It said he spent $250,000 a day to support his lifestyle, operating in “a dazzling and ostentatious realm of luxury beyond the dreams of Croesus, a shadowy sphere of deals, arms brokering and billion-dollar investments.”

Khashoggi arriving at a courthouse in Manhattan in 1990. “It’s all part of the mechanism for impressing people,” he once said. Khashoggi’s business strategy, which he believed required flaunting his wealth and powerful connections. “For A.K., there were no laws, no skies, no limits,” said one of his frequent guests, Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe-Langenburg of Spain. His parties were known for rivers of champagne, bevies of women, international celebrities and endless personal attention from the host, known to his many friends as A.K. Trump - and three lavishly refitted commercial-size jets. He owned the world’s largest yacht - it was used in a James Bond film and later sold to Donald J.

Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, that was made from 16 existing apartments. At the peak of his wealth, he presided over 12 estates, including some in Europe and the Middle East, a 180,000-acre ranch in Kenya and a two-floor Manhattan residence at Olympic Towers, next to St.

His appetites were gargantuan, beyond the limits of vulgarity. It was not strictly accurate, but during the early 1980s his wealth, estimated at $40 billion, placed him in a tiny elite. One biography of him was titled “The Richest Man in the World,” and he was often described that way.

Secretele armatei. Puterea din umbra by Radu Tudor