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Khashoggi's most public debacle has been in Utah, where he was attracted by what he believed were prime development opportunities. The centerpiece of his $1 billion Salt Lake City project is the Triad Center, a $400 million, 25-acre complex of office buildings, a hotel and retail shops. Work stopped after only about a third of the glitzy complex was completed. Khashoggi refuses to cave in to Triad's creditors, among them architects, contractors and banks. "They loaned the money against the collateral, the Triad Center," he says. "Now they hear rumors about my cash-flow problems and call the loans. I am not going to bring in cash from other businesses to pay the bankers. The collateral is all they will get if they persist." In Salt Lake City, Khashoggi was regarded as a hero for ten years; now he is branded a fraud. "If he is the richest man in the world and he is flying around in a gilded plane," says Mayor Palmer Depaulis, "why isn't he paying his debts here?"
As some of Khashoggi's business interests flagged, his somewhat quixotic interest in diplomacy seemed to rise. He came up with the idea, in 1985, of bringing Palestinians and Israelis together for peace talks through a steering committee of American, Egyptian and Jordanian officials. Later he accompanied Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Hussein when they visited the U.S. in 1985. Khashoggi proposed a $300 billion fund to develop the area, a kind of Marshall Plan that would serve as an incentive for peace negotiations. Late in 1985, using his DC-8, he visited eight heads of state in ten days to push his plan. But ultimately nothing came of it. Khashoggi says he has brokered many political arrangements, like the arms-for-hostages deal, but always for reasons of business. "I am not interested in politics," he says. "But if it serves my business interest, I'll play the game."
To his six children, Khashoggi is not a merchant-statesman, but "Baba." His four sons and one daughter by his first wife, Soraya, are all students in the U.S. He and his second wife, Lamia, have a son Ali, 7, who lives most of the time at their house in Cannes. Although he considers himself a traditional disciplinarian and keeps his children on a budget, they do have fringe benefits: the older boys have been known to impress their dates with a tour of the family plane.
Khashoggi first met Lamia in Milan when she was a 17-year-old named Laura Biancolini. When she married Khashoggi in 1978, she changed her name and converted to the Muslim faith (as had Soraya). Buxom and statuesque with blue, almond-shaped eyes, she is self-possessed and cool. She dresses according to the Joan Collins Dynasty handbook, complete with diamonds and decolletage. With her, as with her husband, more is definitely more. Her idea of casual is to wear a one-inch ruby-and-diamond ring with matching ruby earrings. Her 40- carat diamond wedding ring covers the lower half of her ring finger. She asserts that size does not matter. "It's the sentiment that counts," she says in her accented English.