Khashoggi arriving at a courthouse in Manhattan in 1990. “It’s all part of the mechanism for impressing people,” he once said. Khashoggi’s business strategy, which he believed required flaunting his wealth and powerful connections. “For A.K., there were no laws, no skies, no limits,” said one of his frequent guests, Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe-Langenburg of Spain. His parties were known for rivers of champagne, bevies of women, international celebrities and endless personal attention from the host, known to his many friends as A.K. Trump - and three lavishly refitted commercial-size jets. He owned the world’s largest yacht - it was used in a James Bond film and later sold to Donald J. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, that was made from 16 existing apartments. At the peak of his wealth, he presided over 12 estates, including some in Europe and the Middle East, a 180,000-acre ranch in Kenya and a two-floor Manhattan residence at Olympic Towers, next to St. His appetites were gargantuan, beyond the limits of vulgarity. It was not strictly accurate, but during the early 1980s his wealth, estimated at $40 billion, placed him in a tiny elite. One biography of him was titled “The Richest Man in the World,” and he was often described that way.
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