He built a replica Louis XIV palace that was scouted by Kim Kardashian for her wedding. He may also be hiding from the French taxman. A short profile.
It is the CV of the super-rich: born in Lebanon and educated at the Institut le Rosey in Switzerland (annual fee: £80,000); lived in the US and settled in France, where he stepped into his father Adil Khashoggi’s footsteps of developing ridiculously expensive property. He keeps famous company, knows a good deal of dodgy Russians, and he has recently relocated to the UK, prompting speculations of tax evasion.
Really, Emad Khashoggi is just your average rich kid. Except he is 50, and except his uncle was the world’s most notorious arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi, who was very discreet over the last years of his life and passed away in June 2017. Adnan allegedly left a fortune to his clan, including Emad, whom he was reportedly particularly close to. Emad works for Adnan’s company Triad, mainly its luxury property subsidiary Cogemad.
This is where your average rich kid becomes a shady intermediary. Emad is assumed to sell supposed prestigious French properties to undesirables at exorbitantly exaggerated prices. One such client is the family of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi-Arabia. Adnan’s father, Mohammed, was King Abdul Aziz Al Saud’s personal physician, and the family connections enabled Adnan to carve his niche as Saudi’s chief weapons dealer, which at his peak gave him a net worth of $4bn.
Cogemad develops exactly the kind of temples of gaud that appeal to Middle Easterners as well as reality-TV stars and the “nouveau riche”. Emad’s crowning project was a new-built castle in Louveciennes, near Versailles, which is modelled in the style of the famous chateau. The picturesque town some 25 kilometres away from Paris has in its past attracted painters such as Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro and is littered with smaller castles that Louis XIV built for courtesans and the like. Its residents were aghast at its new-found fame when Emad bought a plot of land there and spent three years on the construction of the externally traditional, but internally gaudy palace. Auction house Christie’s pronounced the $200m-development “the most expensive private residence in the world” thanks to features such as a lounge under a fish tank, a cinema, huge wine cellar and “more gold leaf than Les Invalides”, as Emad boasted. It was good enough to be considered as a potential venue for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s wedding – a gold-plated knighthood in the world of vacuous celebrity.
While the Louveriennes project remains Emad’s peak, the Cogemad website lists a number of properties in the South of France currently available. Emad Khashoggi claims to build or renovate luxurious homes, often inspired by French history, and sells them on, mostly to foreigners from China, Russia and the Middle East. He has been noted to keep company in particular of a group of “Russian troublemakers”, as a source describes, who are a little too prominent in the South of France.
A slow property market and dubious company may have contributed to Emad Khashoggi’s decision to relocate to the UK. Or it may be the tax rate. Sources claim Emad is under investigation for tax fraud in France, while the UK’s tax arrangements are famously favourable to the rich.
Stuck between Hollywood types, Russian and Saudi “personae non grata”, it is assuring to know that hype seller Emad has found a quiet corner to retire to. Up until recently, he lived in the Rose Palace of Vésinet in Paris region, an address that has previously been inhabited by the Count Robert de Montesquieu. A Paris Match article says Emad had renovated the home tastefully. The article also shows images of a pink-light bar. Just your average rich kid after all.
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