Adnan M. Khashoggi, known in the world of espionage as AK, the Saudi billionaire who built his reputation and fortune on financial transactions from Salt Lake City and Sudan, found in Maspalomas the perfect place to play with arms trafficking in the Eighties for the war in Iran and Iraq to the despair of Francisco Araña del Toro and Eligio Hernández. Khashoggi's name became famous in the Canary Islands when his connection to the deal emerged when it emerged that checks worth millions of dollars were cashed in London and passed through him and companies linked to him.
The rich have their things. It was 1999 when Elmasa denounced Adnan Khashoggi for the non-payment of 13 million pesetas corresponding to receipts between January 1997 and October 1999. The plaintiffs' lawyer was none other than Eligio Hernández, who was a Government delegate when he had to order Permanent monitoring of the businessman's movements. While he arrived at Monte León in his DC-8 and sometimes traveled the route from the airport in a Mercedes 600, Khashoggi was watched by close enemies Araña del Toro and Eligio Hernández. For Araña del Toro, Khashoggi's presence generated hidden panic in case he generated an image in his youth that in life it was not important to work but rather to mediate with strange things. Khashoggi sent his representatives to speak to Araña del Toro saying that he had no reason to worry because, he maintained, he was not a weapons dealer but rather a "defense systems" dealer.
American arms deals with Iran began in August 1985, just as reports were emerging that Khashoggi's companies were in a liquidity crisis. The cash flow problem was caused in part by the low price of oil, which affected its real estate and construction investments in Saudi Arabia; for the mismanagement of a billion-dollar investment in Utah, and for a variety of other investment problems. Khashoggi and his entourage lived in the same extravagant 100 million euro style of that time.
It had two helicopters and three planes, a DC-9, a 727 and a DC-8, which can fly non-stop for 15 hours and in which Khashoggi does most of his business. The DC-8 had a fully equipped office, a luxurious carpeted bedroom with a bed, and a bathroom with gold-plated fixtures. He had two yachts, the Khalidia and the Nabila, with a helicopter on the upper deck and impressionist paintings in the living room. The yacht appeared in the James Bond film 'Never Say Never Again'. Khashoggi was born in Mecca on July 25, 1935, the son of a doctor to the king of Saudi Arabia. His father sent him to an elegant Egyptian boarding school, Victoria College in Alexandria. There he became a middleman while he was still a high school student, bringing together the father of a Libyan classmate who wanted to buy towels with the father of an Egyptian classmate who made them. At Victoria College he also met Hussein, the future king of Jordan, who ended up buying a house in Teguise, given to King Juan Carlos and today property of State Heritage.
