The Richest Arms Dealer Ever: Adnan Khashoggi
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Learn more at phrma.org/ipworkswonders. It's January 1987, and Adnan Khashoggi has just pulled off one of the world's top-tier PR coups. His portrait is on the cover of Time magazine. Khashoggi's features are soft: his balding head, doe eyes, and black, broo moustache that of an avuncular university lecturer or a mid-ranking snooker pro. His career, however, is far less cute.

"Those shadowy arms dealers," the headline reads, adding, "Adnan Khashoggi's high life and flashy deals." The feature begins with a list of the era's most notorious gun runners, Sarkis Soganlian, for example, the 300-pound Turkish-Lebanese merchant of death said to receive jars of severed human ears from his clients.

Sam Cummings, a US-born Brit peddling around $5 billion worth of weapons left behind by GIs in Vietnam. But towering above them all is Khashoggi, quote, the sybaritic Saudi Arabian whose jet planes, opulent yacht, lavish parties and glamorous companions seem intended to promote his image as the world's richest man. Now there's a hedge, seem intended to promote.

Some say Khashoggi is worth $4 billion. Others double or even triple that. Nobody's entirely sure, though. For years, Khashoggi has fixed deals between his home country, newly flushed with oil money, and U.S. arms giants, Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop, taking commissions that run into the millions of dollars a time.

That is his bread and butter, served with a rolodex that includes kings, presidents and corporate titans. Most is funneled into private bank accounts in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands or Liechtenstein. But far more extravagant is his lifestyle.

Khashoggi owns at least 13 homes in Marbella, Madrid, Paris, Cannes, Kenya, the Canaries, Jeddah, Riyadh, New York, Beirut and Monte Carlo. He backs movies and he builds skyscrapers. He owns the world's biggest superyacht and an air fleet larger than most sovereign nations.

Khashoggi is an inveterate gambler, tossing $1,000 chips to the wee hours, and he spends millions more on women, hundreds of them, some his wives, others girlfriends, and thousands more paid by the hour, sometimes four or five at a time.

writes Khashoggi's biographer, quote,

a playboy and a man obsessed, an underdog and a modern Midas. At this point in 1987 Khashoggi has arguably never been more powerful. Time magazine says he's spending 250,000 a day just to maintain his wildlife. That's almost 700 grand today. But the article isn't just dazzled by the Saudis wealth.

It dives into his shady deals and recent dubious role in the White House's shambolic Iran-Contra affair. Authorities have been chasing Khashoggi for over a decade. And less than a fortnight after his cover story, Khashoggi's empire will come crashing down, filing for bankruptcy and getting wound up in a trial involving stolen Picassos, Louboutin shoes and the disgraced first lady of the Philippines.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Hello everyone and welcome to the weekly podcast that goes hard on gangs, cracks open corruption and digs into the dirty world of drugs, deaths and a bunch of other stuff beginning with D I guess. I am Sean Williams back from a lovely trip to the far north of New Zealand where I got a tan, swam in the ocean and absolutely laid waste to the hotel buffet. Yes, three plates of main course, three plates dessert, four drinks, absolute textbook stuff. I

I am joined today by Danny Gold in New York, who is currently staring down the barrel of his own sunny adventure in the tropics. How is the planning coming along? You know, just recovering from the Super Bowl where I lost every single bet I made and ate until I felt sick within like 10 minutes of the first quarter. So pretty standard day for me, you know? Yeah.

Yep, yep, it was a terrible game, so I would have eaten a lot if it wasn't on in the morning over here too. First off, a couple of corrections. I got a few things wrong in the previous episode on Hawaiian underworld boss Michael Miski. Catherine and Louis Kealoha, those are the corrupt husband and wife at the top of law enforcement, they're actually in office in Honolulu, not the whole of Hawaii, and Hawaii's last monarch wasn't a king, it was a queen.

Uh, here goes a pronunciation. Liliu Kalani, Liliu Kalani. I'm sure that I did that really well. Cheers to Kevin Cano for calling me out on that. And, uh, another massive thanks to listen to Chris Wilson is going to give me a club pro lesson for my terrible golf swing. So it'd be more like Chris guys. Uh,

As usual, bonuses going off on the Patreon. I'm going to speak to a guy about Romanian scam artists tomorrow. I think we're going to do a Stash House later if you want to throw a few bucks our way. Am I missing anything, Danny? Yeah, you got one more error. I asked you, you mentioned La Familia in the last episode. At the cartel, I had asked if it was La Familia, Michoacan. I think you answered. Affirmatively, yes.

Yeah, it's not. It's the prison gang, Nuestra Familia, which is also known as La Familia. So, you know, we got that one wrong. But also...

The bonus episodes are available on patreon.com slash general world podcast, Spotify or iTunes. You can sign up there. You get bonuses. You know, our downloads have gone up like five times over in the last year. Our Patreon has not stayed the same. Let's fix that together. Us and you make it happen. Anyway, we're moving along. We're a team. We're a team. Yeah. Enough of that then onto the main show, especially the corrections of my crappy work. I've been kind of interested in,

in Adnan Khashoggi for years mostly because he's kind of this like Bartomainov character who just appears everywhere in every story from the 20th century and I didn't really know who he was or what he actually did which you're about to find out it's actually a pretty reasonable level of understanding and before we go on yes he is related to Jamal Khashoggi the Saudi journalist who was cut into pieces by MBS's henchmen in 2018 he is his uncle in fact but

But that is just one of seemingly a million scandals and major news stories Adnan Khashoggi has been linked to for the best part of the last century. Back in 2001, Slate did an entire series of pieces called The Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi, and he's been implicated in everything from Iran-Contra to the Lockheed bribery scandals,

the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI, remember that show, the Marcos regime, the Sin Fuels fiasco, the Cotton Club murder, Baby Doc Duvalier, Web Tech, Jeffrey Epstein, and even 9-11. I mean, if this doesn't get us on Rogan, we're toast, man. He also, you know, from that intro,

Just seems like a lot of fun. Like, I'm just going to say it. You know, it seems like he knows how to have a good time. Yeah, he's a cheeky chappy. He likes a fun night out as we are soon to discover. And in fact, so many pies did Khashoggi have his fingers in and I'm not talking about his love life, Danny. That is, that's gross, man. Don't even suggest that. I'm going to turn this show into a soup parlor.

I mean, that is bad for like in juvenile, even for you, man. Jesus. Yeah, I am. I'm sorry. Maybe too much coffee this morning. Anyway, today's first episode is going to dive into Kashugi's early life and background, how he got so wildly, wildly rich and lascivious. Get me going on thesaurus.com and all the crazy stuff that made him this cultural icon as well as a business titan. Of course, the

deals both illegal and illegal politics legal and illegal and kashoggi's legendary sex life which

Yeah, that's got some pretty illicit stuff going on, too. You can say a hell of a lot about this guy and a lot of folks, including us, have. But boy, he was not dull. Now, of course, Adnan Khashoggi was best known as an arms dealer. And it's true that weapons were his stock in trade, the stuff that made him his first billion and what got him on the map. But the truth is, he's really a fixer, a matchmaker.

His most loyal servant, a Syrian-American guy called Khashoggi a, quote, merchant statesman. And while it's a bit of brown nose in there, it's not a long way off. Throughout his life, he was able to bring together people from warring countries and religions, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese, Americans and Iranians. And while he reckoned himself a bit of a peacemaker, well...

where he's an arms dealer. And that can only get you what, like 20% of a Gandhi, Mother Teresa's left thumb, or maybe that fried egg thing on Gorbachev's head. And you might be thinking, hey, numbnuts, I tune in for a show about organized crime, not legitimate arms shipments. Well, all right, sure, but I didn't just spend every night on holiday reading the biography of a bloke who was good at meetings. And

And as we've seen in episodes featuring Victor Boot or Benny Steinmetz or Eric Prince, the world of weapons and war often straddles the legitimate and the illegitimate, which in a way, it's more interesting than mobsters and narcos, isn't it? Isn't it?

Okay. To give you just one lovely image. Yeah, it is, right? It is. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll go with that. Khashoggi, to give you one image, flew around on his own private 727 watching Deep Throat with enough hookers to field a football team. That's 11, Danny. Guy, the guy had to be a criminal somewhere. So what better place to start than the beginning?

Because Adnan Khashoggi enjoyed painting himself as a self-made man, but like all such tales, that is only half true. His story begins on July 25th, 1935, when he's born to a Syrian mother and Saudi father in the holy city of Mecca, in the Western Arabian desert not far from the Red Sea. And this is pretty good timing on two fronts.

Firstly, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is just three years young, conquered from rivaling families by Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud. The king is a simple man of the desert, but he surrounds himself with learned men and sophisticates, one of whom is his court physician, Muhammad Khaled Khashoggi.

Khashoggi is Turkish for spoon maker, and his ancestors had made Hajj to Mecca some 400 years earlier, and they decided to stay, becoming so-called Jararim, or pilgrims who stayed behind. But it's under Ibn Saud that the Khashoggi's become important members of royal society, and Muhammad, as one of few doctors in Saudi, becomes the king's personal physician.

He and his wife Samia have five more kids, but Adnan, as the oldest boy, is given special respect. It is he, after all, who will lead the family after his parents' death.

The second stroke of luck baby Adnan has is that just three years after his birth, the number seven well at Daman, a city on the eastern Persian Gulf side of Saudi, strikes oil. It begins gushing at a rate of almost 1,600 barrels a day. Going by today's money, that's almost 40 grand daily from this one well alone. And of course, we all know the oil just keeps on coming.

And nearly overnight, Saudi Arabia, population under 3 million at the time, has gone from a poor, desolate backwater to one of the richest nations on the planet.

Little Adnan is sent off to school in Alexandria, Egypt, aged eight. It's the center of the Arab world, home to prestigious colleges. But also crucially, it's a place where Arabs from the Gulf states, which adhere to strict versions of Islam, can unwind with beers and girls in bars and nightclubs. Still is, I guess. And actually, Adnan's uncle, a Syrian man named Yusuf Yassin, moonlights as a purchaser of women for Ibn Saud. The king is, shall we say, prolific.

He has at least 72 kids with 22 wives and many, many more concubines.

So the women thing, it is well in the family. I got one kid with one woman, hopefully two wives. What the hell is my legacy, Danny? A podcast? Succulent true crime podcast? Yeah, I think we should be clear there. Not that anyone wants to delve into your personal life, especially me. But the two wives comment, that's because you're divorced and you might get remarried, right? Oh, yeah. Not because you practice polygamy. Literally.

Let's just get ahead of that. Yeah, that's good to do. We'll keep the private live chat there. Although, I mean, I guess we could talk about it for another 30 minutes and probably get more listeners. But anyway. Yeah, it might actually get us some more downloads. Yeah, yeah. Adnan, though, his boarding school teaches all its classes English, so he gets fluent real quick. And he even meets Hussein, the future king of Jordan, while studying there.

That is not the kind of kid that went to my school. Legend goes, he makes his first deal as a middleman, connecting the Libyan father of a schoolmate with an Egyptian towel maker, earning him 200 bucks, which is about three and a half grand today. So I haven't found a shit coin that can turn that kind of margin of view. I mean,

The money's in towels, man. It's always in towels. I think I've actually lost probably like $800 in shit coins since we started recording about 10 minutes ago. Nice work. I have not done that, but I've also not made any money. But Khashoggi is just getting started. In 1952, he graduates and moves back to Jeddah, which is the second largest city in Saudi. And he works in the office of a cousin who's importing goods into the country. After

After doing that for a few months, he heads out to the States for an undergrad. He's supposed to enroll at the Colorado School of Mines outside Denver to become, well, what else, a petroleum engineer. But when he lands in New York City, he hates the cold weather, so he switches courses and heads over to Chico State University in Northern California, where by all accounts, he parties pretty hard and he develops a penchant for sex workers.

Also, the guy is not particularly academic. I mean, why would you be? And each time he goes home, he's enlisted by family and friends, who are, by the way, the elites of Saudi culture, to broker deals for all kinds of equipment, mostly in construction. Remember I said this was a country of Bedouins and backwaters in the boiling desert, which has only just become rich?

Yeah, well at this point, Saudi Arabia is home to just one cement plant, five bakeries, three dairies and two date processing plants. It has only just minted its own national currency and slavery is still legal. Yay! So to hold all these slaves and process all those dates, not to mention all that crude spurting out of the ground, Saudi needs buildings and quick.

Mohammed bin Laden, yes, that bin Laden, Osama's old man, he's the king's construction guy, well on his way to becoming a billionaire himself. And he needs trucks. Khashoggi brokers a bunch from Washington-based Kenworth for half a million US dollars, and he gets 10% via checking the mail. And that's almost 600 grand today, almost as much as we get from the Patreon each year. Quite a lot of cash for you listeners, or what I like to call the little people. And this goes on and on.

on kashoggi connecting powers in saudi with powers in the states and he's pretty shameless about commanding more and more in fees yeah i'm doing air quotes here from deals all right guys let's talk factor meals

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In 1953, Ibn Saud dies, and his son, King Saud, yes, that is quite confusing, takes the Saudi throne. And if anything, he's even keener on Khashoggi than his dad, in part because he wants a slice of that sweet American economic development Khashoggi is relaying back from the States.

Sal gives Khashoggi license to open a brick factory, a tire factory, furniture factory. He's trying to bring the kingdom's infrastructure up to par with the billions flowing through its oil derricks. I mean, that's where the money is, folks. No content creation, whatever else you're doing. Just build things with your hands. Open up a ball bearing factory. That's how you get rich. Yeah, that's actually good advice. But there is something else worrying the king. The Soviet Union and the United States are squaring off all over the planet.

And the Arab world is roiling with revolutionary zeal. You've got Gamal Abdel Nasser taking over the Suez Canal in Egypt. There is civil war in Sudan, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen, elsewhere. Shit is going down. And what do all of these powers need? Oil. Saudi might be rich now, but it's vast, underpopulated and backwards. And the king is terrified that the country will be invaded.

And he's right, by the way. Washington might have brokered the joint Saudi-US-Iran cold away back in the 30s, but that doesn't stop White House insiders and their Moscow enemies drawing up plans to invade Saudi should their oil supply chains get broken. Saud's army consists of just a few thousand men, and it's got weapons you can buy at the average Tennessee gun show. The king needs material. Lots of it. And Adnan Khashoggi knows precisely the Americans who can get them.

Khashoggi's first arms deal actually arrives in 1956. Israel invades the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and Khashoggi brokers a deal for more Kenworth military trucks that Saudi can supply to its Arab ally in Cairo. This deal bags him a cool 150 grand commission, or 1.7 million bucks today, and the young courtier is already well on his way to becoming an incredibly rich man.

But even before he cashes that check, Khashoggi throws a lavish party at the Hotel George V in Paris, complete with caviar, champagne, and, of course, dozens of beautiful women. I mean, it's kind of funny, too, that, you know, that war started because France was pissed that Egypt shut down the Suez. So to do that, to sell weapons, then to the Egyptians and then party in Paris, that's a it's a

It's a pretty, pretty, it's, you know, it's a move right there. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like he doesn't really give a shit what he does or who he sells to. Yeah. This kind of party is pretty much unheard of for an Arab businessman at the time, far less a Saudi one. And the folks who attend it head home with spectacular stories of the young fixer's excess.

Israel pulls out of Gaza and Sinai four months later, but Khashoggi's place is set.

Combined Saudi's demand for weapons with the Arab world's near constant state of conflict. And he's just found his golden goose in the arms trade. He's not the only one. Sarkis Soganalian, the Syrian-Lebanese-Armenian mentioned in the cold open. I've got his name right there. Also reaped fortunes, mostly from Europe's Eastern Bloc nations. And we'll get back to him in the part two because his life is pretty nuts too. But Khashoggi has state cover and it is the best.

By the mid-1970s, Saudi Arabia is spending per capita 3.4 times the US and 4.2 times the USSR on defence. A lot of this stuff is on the books, of course, but a lot more is off them. Saudi officials want to spend their petrodollars backing regional royalists and anti-communists, but they want to do so without a paper trail. So they dispatch Khashoggi to make backroom deals with firms in the US, France, Britain and West Germany.

And because he's essentially a trafficker on their behalf, he commands spectacular commissions. Khashoggi becomes an expert in saying things without saying them, nodding to things without mentioning them outright. He brings a uniquely Bedouin bargaining attitude to the boardroom too.

Khashoggi would often waive fees in order to win trust and bigger contracts down the line. If somebody says they like something, a suit or jewelry or a bag, Khashoggi will just hand it to them on the spot, obviously not the suit he's wearing because he would be naked. The unwritten expectation is, I rub your back, you're going to rub mine. And Khashoggi sweetens deals by bringing along battalions of working girls who'll meet his business partners after hours for drinks, massages, or

or more. Take one of his girls back to your room? Well, that's on you. Nobody told you to do it. But Khashoggi knows now. You're in his pocket.

Here is an excerpt from Ron Kessler's biography of Khashoggi, The Richest Man in the World, which I used a lot for this episode. Quote, Khashoggi was to obtain arms, invest to win friends and influence, and serve as the royal family's eyes and ears in the US. In short, he was to build bridges between the backward kingdom of Saudi Arabia and potential allies.

In 1961, Khashoggi meets a 20-year-old British model named Sandra Daly, and he marries her. Sandra changes her name to Soraya, she converts to Islam, and the couple has five children, a daughter, and four boys. And if you think that marriage is going to last, I'm going to send you the prospectus for Underworld coin, just a snip at 200 bucks.

One partnership that does last, however, is between Khashoggi and his top aide, who he brings on board early on in his deals with the Americans. Robert Shaheen is an Ohio native born of Syrian parents. He's thin, with wire-rimmed specs and a receding hairline much like his bosses. He refers to Khashoggi simply as AK and practically worships the guy.

It happened to Caesar, to Jesus. And it happens today with a man has great visions and dares to be different. He says, just like Danny says, when people ask him what I'm like in real life. And actually, mostly I'm just like, no, he's he's not like that. He's actually a pretty nice guy. He's charming and intelligent. Definitely not like what he sounds like on the show. Oh, that's great. What do I sound like on the show? You know.

You know. Yeah. I mean, deep down, I do. Khashoggi has a dual personality and he shifts between Western pursuit, the playboys and pious though wearing Saudi. A thobe is that sure that's traditional in the Gulf area.

and his deeply personal approach to business wins him admirers in both worlds. He spends 20 minutes deciding which outfit to wear to meetings. Sometimes he'll set up multiple meetings or phone calls at once, flitting between them every few minutes but remembering every detail for each. He's also a weirdly unassuming looking guy. Here's Kessler again. Quote,

He had a neatly trimmed moustache, a short neck and a double chin. Five feet four inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, he somehow manages to look robust rather than flabby. At times, he seemed to roll rather than to walk. I like that. His most distinguishing characteristic was the eyelashes that framed his glistening brown eyes. They were long and black and very curly, like a child's.

Shout out to the short kings everywhere. You can do it, my men. And with no neck, a double chin and 200 pounds, that is, yeah, that's impressive. And Khashoggi is making bank. He trousers 45 million on an early deal for a load of French tanks. But if you're a regional power, you don't want some citron with a BB gun hanging off it. You want proper engineering. And it's in the States where Khashoggi makes his name, chiefly via deals with three companies, Lockheed, Northrop and Raytheon.

I'm skipping the timeline a wee bit here, but some of the numbers are eye-watering. Northrop pays Khashoggi $184 million on $4.2 billion in sales to Saudi over the course of nine years. I mean, that's around a billion dollars in commission today. But even that pales in comparison to what Lockheed pays him, which is $206 million in just one single year, 1975.

By comparison, the other 149 agents the firm pays between 1970 and 1974 receive a combined $64 million. Like Time magazine says, there are arms dealers and there's Khashoggi. And as he becomes more invaluable to these megacorps, his fees skyrockets. Here's Kessler again, quote,

Instead of 5% of a 500 grand contract, Khashoggi got 5% of a 1.5 billion contract. No longer satisfied with 5%, he began charging up to 15%. It was all done at the expense of the Saudis, who knew that the American companies simply increased their prices to cover the commissions they paid Khashoggi. Never before, and probably never again, will one man make so much money so quickly.

Khashoggi christens his own company, Triad, named after himself and two of his brothers who are also on the payroll and, bully for them, also have big, impressive moustaches. He hires a team of 140 employees and he has offices in 38 countries. But their role is less to grow the business than to figure out what the hell to do with Khashoggi's stacks upon stacks of cash. I mean, this guy also really, really knows how to spend money.

He's almost always on a private jet and he amasses a fleet that, alongside the Boeing 727 I mentioned earlier, the one on which he screens old school porn for his harem, includes a DC-9, a Learjet, a G1 Gulfstream, a Challenger jet and a helicopter. He's often in different countries by the day. In one week alone, Khashoggi is reported to have met with the chiefs of state of Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan.

And that's just on the plane. Sometimes Khashoggi prefers to hang out on his 282-foot superyacht, the Nabila, named after his daughter. This thing is worth $70 million and it's widely believed to be the biggest of its kind on Earth.

Among other things, the floating palace has a fully kitted out nightclub with lasers that project Khashoggi's face, which is pretty weird, and it has a fully functioning operating theatre plus a morgue, which is also weird and pretty ominous, or just good planning. So opulent is the Nabila that it will be used in the 1983 James Bond movies Never Say Never Again.

Now remember those 13 homes? One of them is a $25 million two-story, 7,200 square foot condo in Manhattan's Olympic Tower on 5th Ave between 51st and 52nd, which is, if you know New York, quite central. It's

It's got a swimming pool, which is nuts for the apartments at the time, but it is nothing compared to the Marbella property. 5,000 rolling acres, another nightclub of course, a bowling alley, rifle range, and most luxurious of all, get this, a dry cleaner. Khashoggi loves to gamble. One night he's said to have spunk 250 grand on a single roll of the dice, and he often keeps handlers up till 4 or 5 in the morning lobbing four-figure chips at the roulette table.

He doesn't even care where people steal his money. When an employee embezzles 100 grand from Triad, Khashoggi tells him to repay half, keeps him on the books and stays friends. And he's even known to dish out expensive gold bracelets to all of his concubines and call girls. I mean, are we getting the vibe yet, guys? The guy's rich. But as Khashoggi's fees get ridiculous and his lifestyle attracts the attention of the world's media, people start asking questions. And not just in the States.

Saudi officials are starting to chafe at their man's distinctly haram behavior, and rival princes and dignitaries try chatting up Khashoggi's clients for their own piece of the pie. In the US, however, the repercussions are beginning to reach the Senate.

One of the reasons Khashoggi is after such mind-numbing fees is actually that part of his role is to secure backhanders for members of Saudi's royal family. This means dishing out tons of money, which he chalks up in deals as quote, other things.

Now, if these other things have been anywhere near reasonable, and by reasonable I mean not a billion dollars, few people would have likely backed an eyelid. But because they're not reasonable, senators start asking why millions and millions of dollars are just vanishing off the books of the nation's leading arms suppliers. And this poses a particular problem for Lockheed, Norfolk and Raytheon. It's illegal to dish out bribes in the US, of course, but on foreign soil, it's kind of a grey area.

The companies keep almost nothing about these other things on paper, just like they fail to mention the cavalcade of hot young women Khashoggi has been foisted on them for years. Oh, and Khashoggi's codename among US officials? Yep, Cupid.

Hearings into Northrop have been going on since 1972, when the Watergate scandal implicated Northrop chairman Thomas V. Jones, or Tommy V. Jones as I always call him. In 1975, a Long Island local tabloid newspaper, I mean shout out to local media at the time, reports that Khashoggi is about to bag a $45 million agent fee from Northrop, claiming it's the biggest single such fee in history.

Now that pricks up the ears of Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho who's been investigating the company. Church turns his sights on Khashoggi, this profligate Arab who seems to connect just about everyone in Washington and way further beyond. Khashoggi leads Church on a merry goose chase, refusing hearings and jetting from country to country, but it's Church's investigations that truly bring Khashoggi's practices into the public eye. Here is Kessler, quote,

So much was Church Khashoggi's nemesis that Khashoggi's staff came to refer to events as BC and AC, before Church and after Church. Church put Khashoggi on the map. He transformed the clipping files in newspaper morgues from thin envelopes with a few items on Khashoggi's investments to massive packets overflowing with stories of alleged bribes and fees in the tens of millions of dollars.

In 1976, Church finds that Lockheed has been paying massive bribes to heads of state in a load of US allies, Italy, Germany, and France.

the Netherlands and most notably Japan where if you remember from our two-parter on the Yakuza Lockheed had actually paid underworld boss Yoshio Kodama to sway state airlines which ends get this in the resignation of Japan's PM and a kamikaze plane attack on Kodama's house by an ultra-nationalist sexploitation actor because of course really really should do more Japanese stuff soon what a sentence.

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Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton? And time just stands still. Lockheed's bosses get the boot and the company pays some pretty paltry fines by all accounts. Khashoggi's dark arts are brought to light and Church helps christen the Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which enforces disclosure of foreign payments.

But all this is kind of legal, kind of not. It's a bit academic. Khashoggi's world is in the shadows. Always has been, always will be. And at this point, despite all the negative attention, he's just too big to fail. Khashoggi stashes more and more of his wealth overseas, hiding it even from Saudi, where he doesn't have to pay taxes anyway.

He also leverages his political clout to get deeply wound up in the politics of the Cold War, where there is power, because Shoggy tells one of his aides, there is money. Yeah, I mean, that, yeah, of course. Like, is that supposed to be some sort of deep insight right there? Yeah, he's got like a real idiot savant streak and crappy inspo quotes that we're going to get into a bunch more in part two. But yeah, it's, you know, it's not the best. Exactly.

In 1997, Khashoggi buys a villa in attractive land in Kenya from an oilman, gambler and mobster named Ray Ryan. Writes Kessler, quote, Now Khashoggi ruled a virtual city-state within the jewel-like country, his own personal game ranch, another home with a swimming pool and a pool for pet crocodiles. He's got more than one crocodile pool? I don't know. And one of the most magnificent mountain chalets in the world.

This will become the headquarters of something called the Safari Club, an off-books intelligence operation operated by Saudi Arabia and the CIA. I mean, I had no idea Khashoggi was involved in this. I've wanted to do something on the Safari Club for years. But basically, its goal was to boot commies out of Africa. And to do so, it created this giant slush fund at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI.

headed up by Saudi's top spy, Kamal Adam, known half-jokingly as the bank of crooks and criminals. We did a show on the BCCI back in 2022, and it is insane. I mean, we're talking Afghan war, Manuel Noriega, Oliver North, and the death of reporter Danny Casolaro from recent Netflix doco American conspiracy.

Eventually, the BCCI will even run its own drugs, weapons, and illegal currency deals. So go out, check out that episode if you haven't done already. Give us another listen, guys. Why the hell not? But the Safari Club does a ton of illegal stuff to try and screw over the Soviets. It props up dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, which is now DRC.

It hires mercenaries to protect mining operations and it takes part clandestinely in the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia.

Incidentally, just three months after Khashoggi buys the property from Ray Ryan, Ray Ryan is blown up by a car bomb in Evansville, Indiana. No killer is brought to justice. Some say it was the Chicago mob. Some mad lads on the internet think it was Khashoggi. I don't know, guys. Do your own research.

Nowhere does Khashoggi think his wealth and fame can do more good than in the Middle East. And in the late 1970s, he begins reaching out to Israel's defense minister, later forging close ties with Israeli PM Shimon Peres, meeting him on many occasions in Morocco. Khashoggi realizes that Washington thinks Israel is just going to make peace with its Arab neighbors to please them.

which he realises from years of making deals is just completely bonkers. Instead, he and Perez draw up something called the Peace Fund, offering Arab states $300 billion in aid from the US, Saudi and Kuwait, provided they sign a treaty with Tel Aviv.

Yeah, I think that happens in the 80s, right, when Paris is prime minister, unless it's two different things, but I'm pretty sure it was like investment, not aid, and it was with Japan and Western Europe, because Paris' whole thing was about economic integration as a way of forming ties.

And I think the Jordanians were actually on board, but then the other Arab states turned it down. I don't know. Where did you see the 300 billion number? I know it was a lot. I've never seen that number, though. I saw that in a couple of sources. I feel like one was a book on Khashoggi and another one was – I went through a ton of WikiLeaks and diplomatic cables, so I think it was in one of them for this episode. Oh, interesting.

Um, but yeah, I think he reached out to, I'm going to say Weitzman. I think he was the defense minister in like 77 or 78. And then he gets him onto Perez and they, I think they, they kind of hook up like they're friends. Um,

But yeah, doesn't happen, any of this of course. But you can see how Khashoggi, post-church hearings, billionaire and friend to anybody who's ever taken a seat at the UN, he's like utterly convinced at this point he can do anything. But things are about to take a turn. In 1978, Soraya files for a costly divorce, which throws Khashoggi off track.

He gets over the mother of his five kids pretty quickly, and he marries a 17-year-old Italian named Laura Biancolini, who also converts and changes her name to Lamia. He also gets stuck in some pretty weird business deals.

I mean, with all this money, Khashoggi could just play the markets, turn a couple billion into tens, become actually the richest man on earth. I think there's a quote from Donald Trump I'm going to go into in the second part about some of this. Trump actually comes up a bunch in Khashoggi's story. But Khashoggi doesn't do any of this.

Triad, his company, is pretty much just him. He's a one-man band out there making deals, and he's got these 140 underlings not building a business empire, but just figuring out what to do with the cash. Khashoggi doesn't just like to gamble in the casino. He backs plans for a sewer system in Basra, Iraq, a million-acre agriculture business in Sudan, a land development in Gabon the size of Delaware, and a $100 million trading firm in Turkey.

The Triad Centre is a massive development in downtown Salt Lake City that Khashoggi builds with the help from the Mormon Church.

There's a Brazilian meatpacker, a Korean bank, an Indonesian oil tanker business. Khashoggi piles $12 million into 1984 crime musical movie Cotton Club by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Richard Gere, Nick Cage and Diane Lane, whose co-backer, a vaudeville promoter and satanic cult member named Roy Radin, is assassinated by a hitman hired by a jealous fellow producer. Yeah.

Yeah, that six degrees of Adnan Khashoggi is really there. Look up Cotton Club murder. There's a mad Hollywood tale there.

Khashoggi also plans a Chinese city, including a bridge, fishing outlet and motorcycle factory, and even backs a billion-dollar development in Giza, Egypt called the Pyramids Oasis Project, which a local newspaper incidentally calls the most colossal rip-off of the 20th century, adding that it, quote, "...dwarfs every vile enterprise imposed on Egypt by adventurers and racketeers over the last 20 years."

I mean, he kind of sounds like my man Masayoshi, you know, just instead of insane tech company, just throwing insane actual projects. But I don't know, man. Egypt probably could use that right now. They don't have a lot else going on in terms of successes. No, no. He keeps throwing the treble 20s and he keeps throwing off the board. Yeah, he hasn't found his Uber yet, Danny. Let's build the Pyramid Oasis project. Just go for it at this point. Yeah, why not? Actually, I think Egypt actually are. But yeah, it's... I mean...

Look, man, don't probably try and build sewers in Basra or anything in Gabon. I don't know. Or anything in farmland on the side of the Nile. If you're trying to invest your money, just invest it in Apple, man. Just put it all into Apple. Oh, ball bearings. Yes. Make 20,000 ball bearing factories, but not in Gabon, maybe.

Anyway, yeah, most of these plans turn to dust, of course. The businesses shutter and Khashoggi winds up losing huge amounts of his wealth. And Khashoggi's political chutzpah takes a turn when he meets with White House National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane in 1983. And they sit there chatting about U.S.-Iran relations. This meeting will kick off the mad Iran-Contra affair, which will mire Khashoggi in yet more bad PR.

But at this moment, Adnan Khashoggi is flying high. He's a multi-billionaire, perhaps not the richest man alive, but he's certainly among them. He's a womanising father of five, a movie producer, a real estate developer, a master fixer and wannabe political peacemaker. He knows every world leader there is. He's received bribes from some of the most powerful people in commerce, and he's got a nightclub with his own face on a laser in pretty much every continent.

On July 24th, 1985, Khashoggi throws a 50th birthday party for himself at the Marbella Hacienda. And this thing is off the hook. The city's tiny airport is packed full for five days, welcoming some of the world's biggest stars. Brooke Shields, Sean Connery, Shirley Bassey. Maybe not Shirley Bassey. 400 guests in total. Was she big in America? Was she like huge? I know she did like the Bond movies, but...

I don't know. Did anyone know she was? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure people did back then. Yeah. Okay, cool. 400 guests turn up to this thing in total, sunning themselves at Khashoggi swimming pool beside topless girls from Sweden or France, filling up on champagne, caviar, Scottish salmon, grilled lobster, fried squid, chocolate eclairs. Maybe if they're lucky, even some of those little pineapples and cheese on cocktail sticks. This is good stuff. This episode is brought to you by PDS debt.

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I'm ready for my life to change. ABC Sunday, American Idol returns. Give it your all. Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket. Let's hear it. This is a man's world. I've never seen anything like it. And a new chapter begins. We're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol. Season premieres Sunday, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep Podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? If you're curious, I've got just the podcast for you. Conspiracy Theories. Every episode, they investigate what people choose to believe and why.

The archive of over 400 episodes digs into everything from aliens to secret societies to murder cover-ups to whatever the FBI said happened. Plus, they have expert interviews and special guests. Tune in to new episodes of Conspiracy Theories every Wednesday, free wherever you listen to podcasts.

Two months previous, almost 1500 newspapers worldwide had announced that the party would be held at a New York restaurant, costing 750 grand and featuring famed magician Doug Henning, who is scheduled to pull a cake from thin air and float it to Khashoggi's table. Sorry to Doug, I'm sure your cake floating trick was really cool. But Shaheen, Khashoggi's loyal assistant, has decided the New York City venue isn't big enough.

So at the last minute, he switches up to Marbella, flying everybody out at his boss's expense. There is dancing, dining, drunkenness and, of course, a lot of sex. This is when reporters start calling Khashoggi the world's richest man. 18 months later, his gently smiling face will grace the cover of Time magazine, cementing his place among the world's most notorious jet set.

But whether he knows it or not, Khashoggi is teetering on the precipice. The feds are on his back, his investments are about to collapse, and the public is about to be hooked on one of the wildest trials of the century. And it involves Khashoggi, Imelda Marcos, and a gallery's worth of art treasures. Oh, and there's Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, more wives, and a handful of dictators.

And we'll get into that spectacular downfall and the later life of Adnan Khashoggi in part two. For now, guys, enjoy your own meager existences with no nightclubs or lasers of your faces and just make sure not to Instagram your crimes. And to subscribe to the Patreon at patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. And thank you for listening. Oh, yeah, do that too. Oh, yeah.

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