Apparently his family made his fortune selling these:
Posted on 01/07/2003 5:29:17 PM PST by dighton
Mohammed al-Fassi, who died in Cairo on Christmas Eve aged 50, was an Arab sheikh notorious for his wild behaviour and extravagant lifestyle.
Al-Fassi’s father had been a supplier of goods to the Saudi royal family; and his sister was married to the Saudi Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz, a brother of King Fahd. As a result of his various connections, al-Fassi was a fabulously rich man.
He had homes in Beverly Hills and Miami Beach, as well as in London, Spain and Saudi Arabia; he owned two Boeing 707 jets, 36 cars, a $15 million yacht, 26 horses, a zoo in Saudi Arabia and millions of dollars worth of jewellery, antiques and paintings.
Instead of keeping his wealth discreetly hidden from prying eyes, al-Fassi splashed it around with eccentric abandon. He first came to public attention in 1978, when he bought a 38-room house in Beverly Hills for $2.4 million in cash, had it painted a bilious shade of green, replaced the red tiled roof with copper, filled the garden urns with garishly-coloured plastic flowers and had all the classical Italian marble statuary painted in natural “flesh” tones, with the hair and genitalia picked out to make them appear more lifelike.
It was too much even by Tinseltown standards, and when, two years later, the house burned down during al-Fassi’s absence abroad, local residents gathered outside chanting “Burn! Burn! Burn!”.
Al-Fassi also looked after more than 100 stray cats, which he began to take in after hearing that unwanted American felines were being put to sleep; he had doomed animals flown in to his house from other American cities, and even bought birds from local pet shops and lobsters from local supermarkets in order to set them free.
In 1990, however, days after he pledged $1 million to help found a new animal rights organisation, al-Fassi was charged with cruelty after animal welfare investigators found that his cats were suffering from neglect. But it remained al-Fassi’s turbulent private life that generated the most column inches. Under Saudi law, sheikhs are entitled to have as many as four wives, but Al-Fassi had a total of six, three of whom he divorced.
In 1983, after a long-running battle in the American courts, his estranged Italian-born first wife, Dena, whom he married in 1975, was awarded nearly $82 million from her husband’s estate, of which she collected a “mere” $8 million.
His second wife Victoria, an aspiring American actress whom he wed while he was still married to Dena, ran off after a few weeks, alleging that her husband had bitten her, beaten her and held her prisoner.
Mohammed al-Fassi was born in Morocco in 1952, and moved with his family to Saudi Arabia aged 10. By the end of his life, he was no more welcome there than he was in America. In 1992 he launched himself into the political fray with a series of radio broadcasts from Baghdad in which he supported the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and castigated the Saudis for letting in infidel troops.
While staying in Amman, he was arrested by the Jordanians and extradited to Saudi Arabia, where he spent months in detention before being held under house arrest for about three years.
In America, al-Fassi was the defendant in several lawsuits claiming unpaid debts, and former employees sued him for physically abusing them. In 2001 Egyptian police ordered his arrest, and detained his wife Samia, on suspicion of having tried to smuggle out of the country Islamic artefacts looted from mosques.
Mohammed al-Fassi is survived by three wives and seven children.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
Hey Larry, we got a real live one here. .....a whole two and a half years after the fact. A relative, of course. Maybe he didn't like the fact that I was poking fun at Muhammed's redecorating taste (post #7).
Aw, we didn't even get to play.
Pinged you too but your name disappeared.
Apparently his family made his fortune selling these:
Funny!
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