Ghaith Pharaon

Ghaith Rachad Pharaon (born September 7, 1940 in Riyadh (or Jeddah) and a citizen of Saudi Arabia) is a prominent Saudi businessman and financier, and was a key player in the global oil and banking industries in the 1970s and 1980s. A continuing subject of interest by the U.S. Department of Justice and multiple foreign investigative agencies, he attained brief notoriety in the U.S. for his role as the "frontman" in the BCCI scandal and for peripheral roles in the Harken Energy, CenTrust and numerous other scandals.

After the events of September 11th, he re-emerged as a subject of interest, due in part to having been a former classmate of George W. Bush at Harvard Business School, and a prominent investor in Bush's short-lived venture Arbusto Energy. According to the Khaleej Times, a French parliamentary report has indicated links between Pharaon and the financial networks of Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden.

Notable affiliations

Business associates

• Roger Tamraz
• Khaled bin Mahfouz
• Kamal Adham
• Abdul Raouf Khalil
• Abbas Gokal
• Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh
• Bert Lance
• John Connally
• James R. Bath
• George W. Bush

Banking affiliations

• BCCI
• Main Bank of Houston
• National Bank of Georgia
• Independence Bank of Encino
• CenTrust Federal Savings Bank of Miami, a "failed sattelite" of BCCI
• Bank of the Commonwealth
• First American Bankshares

Oil industry

• Arbusto Energy, seed investor.
• Occidental Petroleum Company, shareholder.

Other

• Interedec Inc, Savannah-based U.S. holding company, established 1983

Current activities

Pharaon is said to live somewhere near the Red Sea and to get around from time to time with the help of his 60-foot super-yacht, Le Pharaon.

External links

• http://www.pharaon.com - defunct personal website
• http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.pharaon.com/ - snapshots of Pharaon's site at the Wayback Machine