Talk:Ghaith Pharaon

Silver

I think that Ghaith Pharaon was involved in the Hunt brothers' silver antics in 1979 and 1980. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.207.21 (talk) 14:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC) See http://www.sharelynx.com/papers/BunkerHunt.php —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.49.237 (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Notable affiliations

This section (and its subsections) is unsourced and comprises a long ill-defined list. It also contains a large number of redlinks. RJFJR (talk) 22:52, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Business associates

• Roger Tamraz
• Adnan Khashoggi, rival and occasional business partner.
• Talat M. Othman, co-investor in Harken Energy.
• Saudi financier Khaled bin Mahfouz; close friend and confidant
• Sheikh Kamal Adham, BCCI principal, head of Saudi intelligence
• Sheikh Abdul Raouf Khalil
• Sheikh Abdullah Taha Bakhsh
• Faisal Saud Al Fulaij, via BCCI.
• Nazir Chinoy, BCCI.
• Agha Hasan Abedi and Swaleh Naqvi, BCCI co-founders.
• Amer Lodhi, lawyer; worked for BCCI and for Pharaon.
• Javier González Fraga, economist hired by Pharaon to manage debt equity swaps for BCCI in Argentina, former President of the Central Bank of Argentina and current (as of June of 2011) Vice-Presidential candidate for the Radical Civic Union.
• Abbas Gokal, and other members of the Gokal Family of Pakistan.
• P. S. Prasad, BCCI's largest individual borrower in the US at the time of its collapse; fled to India in 1991.
• Bert Lance, Clark Clifford, Robert Altman, James R. Bath, via BCCI.
• Sergio da Costa, former Brazilian ambassador to the US; BCCI front man in Brazil and consultant for Kissinger Associates.
• Michael Ameen, Houston-based oil consultant, associated with Mobil, Aramco, Harken. Early acquaintance of Pharaon and long-term friend of Bakhsh.
• David Paul, via CenTrust.
• John Connally, co-investor with Mahfouz and Bath in the Main Bank of Houston.

Family members

• Dr. Rashad Pharaon, father. The Syrian-born Rashad came to Saudi Arabia, where he became chief physician to King Abdul Aziz, and later a political advisor to kings Faisal and Khalid.
• Mazen Rashad Pharaon, brother, involved in the BCCI scandal.
• Waleed Pharaon
• Wabel Pharaon, brother, also involved in the BCCI scandal, notorious womanizer with known mistresses in Paris and London.

Banking affiliations

• BCCI
• Main Bank of Houston
• The National Bank of Georgia (U.S.)
• Independence Bank of Encino
• CenTrust Federal Savings Bank of Miami, a "failed satellite" of BCCI
• Bank of the Commonwealth, Detroit.
• First American Bankshares

Oil industry

• Arbusto Energy, seed investor.
• Occidental Petroleum Company, shareholder.
• Attock Oil Company Limited, UK, major shareholder

Minor holding / shell companies

• Interedec Inc, Savannah-based holding company, established 1983 (along with sister companies in the Netherlands Antilles and in the Bahamas).
• GRP Inc, another Georgia-based holding company, established 1981.

Conglomerates

• Pharaon Group of Pakistan
• Various entities under the umbrella of the Saudi-based Attock Group of Companies, such as Attock Oil, Attock Cement of Pakistan, National Refinery Limited Pakistan.

Real estate

Notable past holdings

• The Hyatt Hotel in Riyadh was one of Pharaon's earlier projects, and helped launch his career. It later became known in the West as the U.S. Military's base of operations in the Persian Gulf War.
• Pharaon also owned the former Henry Ford II estate outside of Savannah, GA.

Current holdings

• The 5-star Janna Spa & Resort, outside Madaba, Jordan (about an hour south of Amman); recently given a gushing review by the New York Times. (Janna means "garden" in Arabic [and] is commonly used in the meaning of "heaven").

• The 60 meter superyacht Le Pharaon, launched in 1989 by Feadship Royal Van Lent and lengthened in 2003 during a refit at Peters Schiffbau GmbH.

defunct personal website

• http://www.pharaon.com - defunct personal website

Whitewashing

There have been attempts to 'white-wash' this page by removing sourced information about being wanted by the FBI etc. in relation to the 1991 financial collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Single; purpose accounts, they only edited this BLP page, Possible555 (talk · contribs), Xy2xx (talk · contribs) and most recently 82.212.74.142 (talk · contribs) are the editors involved.The IP geo-locates to Jordan, see [1]--220 of ^Borg 00:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Pharaon and Arbusto

The article originally stated:

 Pharaon was a major investor in Arbusto Energy, former President George W. Bush's first business venture. After several attempts, Arbusto Energy emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation, with George W. Bush prominently on the board of directors.[5] In 1987, the Harken Energy was desperate for money, and a bank that was half-owned by Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) gave Harken a $25 million loan. Another Saudi investor and Pharaon partner is Abdullah Bakhsh, who joined the board of directors as a part of the deal. Bakhsh's banker was Khalid bin Mahfouz, who had his own shares in Arbusto/Harken, via the inheritance of Salem Bin Laden.

Most of this is incorrect or unsourced.

• Pharaon did not invest in Arbusto. I have looked hard and there is no source that says this. Craig Unger does not say this. Jonathan Beaty does not say this. No one says this.
• The implication that Arbusto was bought directly by Harken is not correct. Arbusto merged with Spectrum 7 in 1984, and in 1986 Spectrum 7 was bought by Harken. I don't understand what "several attempts" means here.
• The whole long string of statements after this is totally unsourced. Who says Harken was desperate for money in 1987? What was the bank "half owned by BCCI"? What does all this have to do with Pharaon? Abdullah Taha Bakhsh may have bought shares in Harken, but he was not on the board; Talat Othman was on the board. I would not be surprised if Abdullah Taha Bakhsh had money in Khalid bin Mahfouz's bank: the National Commercial Bank was for many years the only private Saudi owned bank in Saudi Arabia. So what?
• The claim that Mahfouz had shares in Harken "via the inheritance of Salem Bin Laden" is not true, because Salem bin Laden did not have shares in Arbusto. Craig Unger is quite clear on this, and no one has come up with anything that says otherwise.

Because of these multiple flaws, I am simply deleting the whole paragraph. There are other errors in the article. I will leave comments here as I correct them. Rgr09 (talk) 08:24, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Pharaon and James Bath

James Bath did not own any banks in Georgia. Changed this to note that Pharaon purchased the National Bank of Georgia from owner Bert Lance. Pharaon purchased this bank on behalf of BCCI, and this is one reason that criminal charges were brought against him. There is actually no explanation of how Pharaon broke the law anywhere in the article. May try to fix this in the coming months. Rgr09 (talk) 09:04, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced claims of businesses

The article originally stated:

 Pharaon's investments include Interdec inc., the CRS Group, and the Moran Company.  He currently has business interests in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Jordan, and Argentina.

The articles cited do not mention any of these companies. In addition, newspaper articles form 1991 cannot be cited as a source for Pharaon's activities in the 2010s. I have therefore deleted the paragraph. Rgr09 (talk) 02:29, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

New lead

I rewrote the lead to provide a better source and to explain what Pharaon was charged with. Rgr09 (talk) 15:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Banker in the sun

Can we mention the blog by his grandson? 78.148.65.71 (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

source http://www.rashadpharaon.com/newsite/about 78.148.65.71 (talk) 21:41, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Birthday

Is it the 8th or 9th? 78.148.65.71 (talk) 21:42, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Death

According to Hungarian news portals, he died in a Beirut hospital. --Norden1990 (talk) 23:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

A lot of the Hungarian blog material about Pharaon seems to be unreliable. This claim requires at least a link to a real newspaper story as a source. Rgr09 (talk) 04:55, 8 January 2017 (UTC)