Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi arms merchant and world-class playboy, dies

Source: Washington Post

By Brian Murphy June 6 at 2:17 PM

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi middleman-for-hire who amassed huge wealth and influence peddling everything from American weapons to favors for Riyadh’s rulers and CIA spymasters, only to see his fortunes collapse amid the Iran-contra affair and other scandals, died on June 6 at a hospital in London. He was 81, by most accounts.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, the family said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

Mr. Khashoggi’s name may have lost its luster since his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but not so the list of misdeeds and abuses that remain defining events of the time. Though never convicted, the U.S.-educated Mr. Khashoggi was linked, as a money-mover and five-star fixer, with some of the era’s most infamous figures and schemes.

At the same time, he moved seamlessly between covert shadows and dazzling opulence — a lifestyle estimated by the Economist in 1987 to cost $250,000 a day. He partied with Hollywood elite such as Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor; traveled in a blinged-out DC-8; kept an Indian swami as an on-call adviser; and boasted about his bevy of young mistresses.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/adnan-khashoggi-saudi-arms-merchant-and-world-class-playboy-dies/2017/06/06/491bbe60-4adf-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html