The Underworld Podcast - The Richest Arms Dealer Ever: Adnan Khashoggi

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Adnan Khashoggi was born in Mecca — but his life was anything but pious. The billionaire had multiple wives, girlfriends and armies of callgirls, not to mention gambling sessions and club nights whose costs ran into the millions of dollars. Khashoggi made his first riches shipping arms from the US to Saudi Arabia. But soon his “fees,” and the ways he got them, began to catch up with him. And dalliances in politics, bad investments, and some friends in dark places, would send the life of the ‘world’s richest man’ into a criminal tailspin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals

because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. 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 boarding head, do-eyers and black broom 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 Kishoggi's high life and flashy deals. The feature begins with a list of the era's most notorious gun runners, Sarkis Saganlian, 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 Siberic 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, Koshoggi has fixed deals between his home country, newly flushed with oil money and US 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 roller decks 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 Marbeah, 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 super yacht and an athlete larger than most sovereign nations. Koshoggi is an inveterate gambler, tossing $1,000 chips till 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 Koshoggi's biographer, quote, he is at once the ultimate capitalist and the ultimate bohemian, the ultimate fixer, and the ultimate consumer, a citizen of the world and a diplomat without portfolio, a man who is at once. who knows the Quran by heart and a gambler who loses millions at the roulette tables. A uniquely complex man and a disarmingly simple person, 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 Saudi's wealth.

It dives into his shady deals and recent dubious role in the White House's symbolic 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 Picasso's, Lubiton shoes, and a 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 a 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've got a tan, swam in the ocean and absolutely laid waste to the hotel buffet. Yes, three plates of main calls, three plates dessert, four drinks, absolute text. book stuff. 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, just recovering from the Super Bowl where I lost every single bet I made and ate till I felt sick within like 10 minutes of the first quarter. So pretty standard day for me, you know? 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 Kiloha, those are the corrupt husband and wife at the top of law enforcement. They're actually an office in Honolulu, not the whole of Hawaii and Hawaii's last monot wasn't a king, it was a queen.

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

As usual, bonuses going off on the Patreon. I'm going to speak to a guy about a Romanian scam artist 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 era. I asked you, you mentioned La Familia in the last episode. The cartel I had asked if it was La Familia, Mijo Khan.

I think you answered it. Affirmatively. Yeah, it's not. It's the prison gang, Neuestra of 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. Stay the same. Let's fix that together, us and you make it happen. Anyway, we're a team, guys. We're a team, we're a team. Yeah, enough of that then.

On to the main show, especially. the corrections of my crappy work. I've been kind of interested in Adnan Khashoggi for years, mostly because he's kind of this like Bartemeynhoff 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, his hench, in 2018. He is his uncle, in fact. 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 Fules Fiasco, the Cotton Club Lurda, Baby Doc Duvalier, WebTech, 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 chapie. He likes a fun night out as we are soon to discover. And in fact, so many pies to Koshoggi have his fingers in, and I'm not talking about his love life, Danny.

is that's gross man don't even suggest that jesus i'm going to turn this show into a soup 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 kushugi's early life and background how he got so wildly wildly rich and lascivious get me going on thesaurus dot com and all the crazy stuff that made him this cultural icon as well as a business tight and 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 kashoggi 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 what got him on the map but the truth is it'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 Gulberchoff's head. And you might be thinking, hey, numnuts, 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 and holiday reading the biography of a bloat who was good at meetings. And as you'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. give you just one lovely image.

Yeah, it is, right? It is. Yeah. Okay. Sure. 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 painted himself as a self-made man, but like all such tales, that is only half true.

His story begins on July 25, 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-Salad. The king, he's a simple man of the desert. But he surrounds himself with learned men and sophisticated. one of whom is his court physician, Mohamed Khaled Khashoggi. Keshogi is Turkish for spoonmaker, and his ancestors have made Haj to Mecca some 400 years earlier, and they decided to stay, becoming so-called Jadarim, or pilgrims who stayed behind. But it's under Ibn Sal that the Khashogis

become important members of royal society, and Mohammed, as one of a few doctors in Saudi, becomes the king's personal physician. He and his wife Samir 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 demand, 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, and 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 8. It's a 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 is a purchaser of women for Ibn Soud. 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, a 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. Let's just get ahead of that. Yeah, that's good to do. We'll keep the private life chat there.

Although, I mean, I guess we could talk about it for another 30 minutes and probably get more listeners. But anyway. Yeah, might actually get us some more downloads. Yeah, yeah. Adnan, though, his boarding school teaches all class is 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 you. I mean, the money's in towels, man. It's always in towels. I think I've actually lost probably like $800 and $800. chip 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 important goods into the country. 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 pontium 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 is 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. Keshoggi brokers a bunch from Washington-based Kenworth for half a million US dollars, and he gets 10% via check in 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. Keshoggi 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. Bonjour, compadre. It's the price line negotiator.

How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle, deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than price. line. Hold your horses.

There's more. The app let you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle.

Restrictions apply. One, two, a one, two, three, four, Give me a break, get me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Katchalk and Krispherstice. Give me a break. Give me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.

Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. 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, you know, build them with your hands. Open up a ball-bearing factory. That's how you get rich. 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 taken over Suez Canal in Egypt.

There is civil war in Sudan, Lebanon, Amman, 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 broken the joint Saudi U.S.

and ramcold 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 in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and Khashoggi brokers a deal for more Kenworth military trucks that Saudi can supply to its Arab Alarai in Cairo. This deal bags him a cool 150 grand commission, or $1.7 million today,

and the young Kaltia is already well on his way to become an incredibly rich man. But even before he cashes that check, Koshoggi throws a lavish party at the hotel George the Thief 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 pretty, pretty, 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 success. 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 Soganilian, the Syrian-Lebanese Armenian mentioned in a 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 defense. A lot of this stuff is on the books, of course, but a lot more is often. 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 dispatched 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. Koshoggi 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. Keshoggi would often

weigh 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, Kishoggi 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 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, Koshoggi 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 part of the ship 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 rims specs and the 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 where the 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. Koshoggi has a dual personality, and he shifts between Western Basuit the Playboys and pious thobe wearing Saudi a thob is that. Shore that's traditional in the Gulf.

And he's 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 mustache, 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 frames his glistening brown eyes they were long and black and very curly like a child's shout 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 Koshoggi makes his name, chiefly via deals with free companies, Lockheed, Northrop and Raytheon. I'm skipping the timeline a wee bit here, but some of the numbers are eye-watering. Northrop pays Koshoggi $184 million on $4,000.

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 pay was 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 bucks. Like Time Magazine says, there are arms dealers and there's Khashoggi. And as he becomes more invaluable to these megacorpse, his fees skyrockets. Here's Kessler again, quote. Instead of 5% of a 500 grand contract, Kishoggi 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 pay Kishoggi. Never before and probably never again, but one man makes 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 helencopter. He's often in different countries by the day. In one week alone, Koshoggi 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 super yacht than Abila, 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 kidded-out nightclub with lasers that project Khashoggi's face, which is pretty weird, and it has a fully functioning in 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, you know New York quite central. It's got a swimming pool which is nuts for the apartments at the time, but it is nothing compared to the Marbeah 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 said to have spunk 250 grand on a single roll of the dice, and he often keeps handlers up till four or five 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,

to chafe at their man's distinctly haram behaviour, 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's 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 reason why I mean not a billion dollars, few that 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 arm 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 gray area. The companies keep almost nothing about these other things on paper, just like they

failed 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 Norfolk 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 years 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 B.C. and A.C.

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 them tens of millions of dollars. In 1976, Church finds that Lockheed has been paying massive bribes to heads of state in a load of U.S. allies,

Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and most notably Japan, where, if you remember from our two-parts run the Yakuza, Lockheed had actually paid underworld boss Yoshio Kadama to sway state airlines, which ends, get this, in the resignation of Japan's PM, and a kamikaze plane attack on Kadama's house by an ultra-nationalist sexploitation actor, because, of course, really, really should do more Japanese stuff soon. What a sentence. At first, I didn't think it was real.

I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials.

No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. For the moments that matter, choose Kyrad Naturals. Infused with aloeira and vitamin E, Kyrad natural's bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts, and burns, while also moisturizing your skin. Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best,

choose Kyrad, a deeper level of care. Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit Kyrad.com to learn more. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

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. Koshoggi 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 whole war. Where there is power, Khashoggi 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 too. But yeah, it's, you know, it's not the best. In 1997, Koshoggi

buys a villa and 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 Koshuggi 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 Kamala Dam, 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 Casillaro 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 such dictators like Mobutu Sessiseko in Zaire, which is now DRC. It hires mercenaries to protect mining operations. and it takes part clandestinely, is that a word, 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 Perez, 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 realizes from years of making deals. It's just completely bonkers.

Instead, he and Perez draw up something called, Peace Fund, offering Arab States $300 billion in aid from the U.S., Saudi, and Kuwait, provided they sign a treaty with Tel Aviv. I don't, 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's whole thing was about, like, 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 never, 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, I went through a ton of like wiki leaks and diplomatic cables. So I think it was in one of them. Oh, interesting. 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 on to Perez and they, I think they kind of hook up, like they're friends. But yeah, it 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 hundred-million-dollar 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 Geer, Nick Cage and Diane Lane,

whose co-backer, a vaudeville promoter and satanic cult member named Roy Rading, is assassinated by a hitman, hired by a jealous fellow producer. 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 he 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 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 throw in insane actual projects. But I don't know, man. Egypt probably could have used that right now.

They don't 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, 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. Barberians. Yes, make 20,000 ballbearance factories, but not in Gabon, maybe. Anyway, yeah, most of these plans turn to dust, of course. The business is shuttered, and Khashoggi winds up.

losing huge amounts of his wealth. And Khashoggi's political Hootspah takes a turn when he meets with White House National Security Advisor Robert Mufarlane in 1983. And they sit there chatting about US-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 womanizing 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 24, 1985, Khashoggi throws a 50th birthday party for himself at the Marbeah 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 Bassy. Maybe not Shirley Bassy. 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 turned up to this thing in total, sunning themselves at Khashoggi, swimming pool beside topless girls, Sweden or France, filling up on champagne, caviar, Scottish salmon, grilled lobster, fried squid, chocolate declares, maybe if they're lucky, even some of those little pineapples and cheese on

cocktail sticks. This is good stuff. As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy, throw some pickles some barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 7-Eleven. Valley through 62326 participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you

on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. Mr. Dher. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers, to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult

and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, Morning Cup of Murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled,

then sit back and start your day with a Morning Cup of Murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? If you're curious, I've got just the podcast for you. Conspiracy theories. Every episode, they need to be. 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 into new episodes of conspiracy theories every Wednesday, free wherever you listen to podcasts. Two months previous, almost 1,500 newspapers worldwide to denounce that the party would be held at a New York restaurant, costing 750 grand and featuring famed magician Doug Henning, who was scheduled to pull a cake from thin air and float it to Kashoggi's table. Sorry to Doug, I'm sure you're a 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 Marbeah, flying everybody out at his boss's expense. There is dancing, dining, drunkenness, and, of course, a lot of sales. 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. his 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. Let me tell you the secret of how to look like you know what you're doing. Use mushrooms. Tossamine eggs, noodles, boom, it's delicious. It's not magic. It's mushrooms. Hit up mushroomcounsel.com and get cooking.

Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required.

Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.