Switzerland: Sheik Down

How to lose $14 million

Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi may have wanted to acquire nuclear technology. Lebanese Businessman Anthony Tannoury seemed anxious to make a lot of quick bucks. Neither succeeded, but those were the elements of what seems to have been an unusually audacious swindle.

The intrigue began when Tannoury, 37, a Paris-based entrepreneur, told Saudi Sheik Mezan Pharaon that Gaddafi had offered $1 billion to anyone who could supply certain "strategic materials," presumably parts for an atomic reactor. Tannoury said he could obtain the materials through Venezuelan associates, but that he first needed to come up with a...

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