https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/t...-safari-club-3785290


Khashoggi, the CIA and other untold stories of the Mt Kenya Safari Club

SUNDAY APRIL 17 2022

.

Summary
With the Khashoggi sale concluded in 1977, the Mt Kenya Safari Club was now in the hands of a man who was friendly to the American CIA and whom the Washington Post had aptly described as ‘money-mover and five-star fixer’.
T

SNJOHNKAMAU By John Kamau
More by this Author

On July 26, 1977, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi bought the Mt Kenya Safari Club from its Mafia-linked owner, Ray Ryan – whom we featured here two weeks ago. Eighty-Four days after Ryan had pocketed his fortune, on October 18, 1977, he was blown up in a car bomb in Evansville, Indiana. While the masterminds have never been found — it was widely believed that Ryan was killed by the same Chicago gang that he courted to survive in the bowels of sleaze, drugs and gambling.

This story — demanded by many of my readers — is a follow-up to the untold story of Mt Kenya Safari Club, the post-independent Kenya version of the colonial “Happy Valley”.

With the Khashoggi sale concluded in 1977, the Mt Kenya Safari Club was now in the hands of a man who was friendly to the American CIA and whom the Washington Post had aptly described as ‘money-mover and five-star fixer’.

But besides being a broker, the billionaire Khashoggi was many things in one package of sleaze. He could easily spend $250,000 (Sh25 million) a day to finance his dazzling parties with Hollywood’s elite — including Elizabeth Taylor — and his bevy of young mistresses always in tow. All these, and his DC-8 jet and a yacht, were all underwritten by the commissions he got from the international weapons trade, thanks to the Cold War and the Arab crisis.

Khashoggi had made a fortune from these political problems by brokering arms sales between military firm Lockheed and the Saudi Government. It was once reported that between 1970 and 1975, just about the time he invested some of his ‘loose change’ in Kenya, he had earned about $106 million (Sh12 billion). Finally, the man’s fortune rose to $4 billion (Sh460 billion) and he was touted as the richest weapon’s dealer on earth.

Hollywood stars



With Ryan, the previous owner of the Mt Kenya Safari Club, hobnobbing with some of the Hollywood stars, and having lured big-screen star William Holden to become a partner in the investment, and with Khashoggi’s dalliance with Elizabeth Taylor, their paths crossed.

They met, and the Saudi tycoon arrived in Nanyuki in 1975 to see Ryan’s property. He not only fell in love with the property, the same way Ryan had, but dreamt that one day, it would be one of his many bolt-holes. His other properties were in London, Madrid, Marbella, Cannes and, it was claimed that he had 100 limousines.

Ryan and Khashoggi struck a rapport. They both loved the lavish and hedonistic life. Cigars. Girls. Fine wine. And they were addicted to gambling.

What was not known — perhaps to Ryan — was that Khashoggi was also working with the CIA – at least with Miles Copeland, the man who once complained that the CIA was not assassinating enough anti-American leaders and overthrowing anti-American governments.

By the time Khashoggi visited Mt Kenya Safari Club, it was more than a club. It was slowly becoming the hub of private Western intelligence operatives — who called themselves the “Safari Club”. Their agenda was to tame the influence of the Soviet Union in Africa and Khashoggi was part of the group. While the US was not directly involved in activities of the “Safari Club”, its Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, is said to have given the group his tacit approval.

Those were the circles within which Khashoggi operated.

As the money flowed, and at a time when Saudi petrodollar millionaires were emerging, Khashoggi surprised many in the 60s when he married English socialite Sandra Daly. Sandra would later convert to Islam and adopt the name Soraya. They married in 1961, but the marriage ended in 1974. One of Soraya’s children, Petrina, was sired by disgraced Conservative MP Jonathan Aitken.

That revelation in 1999, when Petrina was 18, was fodder for British tabloids and came at a time when the Tory Cabinet minister was charged with perjury in a case where he had sued a British newspaper that had alleged that Aitken used to procure prostitutes for Arab businessmen when he served as Margaret Thatcher’s minister for Defence Procurement.

That affair was taking place just about the time Khashoggi was buying the club. It is claimed — at least by one biographer — that Khashoggi bought Mt Kenya Safari Club without telling Soraya. He later gave it to his son, Khalid, who was turning 21, as a birthday gift.

Celebrate birthdays

Khashoggi knew how to celebrate birthdays. One writer recalled how Khashoggi threw “for his 50th birthday in 1985, a five-day bacchanal at his retreat in southern Spain. The cake was topped by a spun-sugar crown modelled after one worn by France’s Sun King, Louis XIV, and guests roamed the grounds with flutes of Moët Champagne among imported African wildlife.”

The said wildlife came from his other property, Ol Pejeta in Laikipia – which was the game hunting ground for the world’s millionaires, even though hunting was banned in Kenya.

What is interesting is that negotiations for the purchase of the Mt Kenya Safari Club were brokered by Edward K Moss, who according to Peter Scott, in the book American Deep State, was a CIA operative doubling as Khashoggi’s public relations manager.

According to declassified CIA records, Moss was the same man who was used by the CIA in November 1962 to try and get rid of Cuban President Fidel Castro. It was known that Moss’s mistress, Julia Cellini, was the sister to Dino Cellini who was running some casinos in Havana on behalf of the Italian Mafia in 1950s and 60s.

Both Julia and her brother were known to procure prostitutes for the high society, and, thus, Moss came in handy as Khashoggi’s “public relations” person, for he wanted to use sex to win over US executives.

When Khashoggi was in September 1975 invited by the US House of Representatives to explain the kind of business that he does to be receiving upwards of $100 million, it was Moss who appeared on his behalf — an indicator of the central role he played.

Thus, the acquisition of Mt Kenya Safari Club would serve part of the purpose, since it was hidden from any public and tabloid journalists.

Moss was appointed the Mt Kenya Safari Club general manager and was nicknamed Bwana Commander, according to one of the club’s publications. But Mt Kenya Safari Club was not the only place for such escapades.

“The bill for the madam who supplied girls en masse to his yacht in the Mediterranean ran to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to Peter Scott in the book The Deep State. So murky was this world of politics, sex, and business that when Gary Hart decided to run for the US presidency in 1987, one of the Khashoggi prostitutes emerged and destroyed his candidature. As Vanity Fair wrote after that episode, the procuring was big and strict business: “According to one procurer, recruitment standards for party girls were strict. They had to be between the ages of 18 and 24, classy and elegant, capable of making conversation, and very, very clean, with just the right combination of innocence and sexiness.”

Ronald Kessler, Khashoggi’s biographer, says that in some of the outings and as the billionaire gambled with thousand-dollar chips, some of the girls would be seen sniffing cocaine. That was mostly in Las Vegas; but whether Mt Kenya Safari Club was spared those vices is not known. However, it explains why Khashoggi’s entourage to Nanyuki always consisted of young girls, either hosted at the Mt Kenya Safari Club or at Ol Pejeta.

“Khashoggi’s lifestyle was nomadic … he would drop down to Nairobi without warning with his entourage (and) change to a number of smaller planes depending on the number of retainers … at one particular members luncheon Khashoggi arrived unannounced in a helicopter, with six leggy blondes in tow, all dressed in immaculate khaki safari suits. He insisted they follow behind him, leapfrogging one another into the rose garden ... on another occasion Khashoggi landed with a belly dancer and Egyptian orchestra…,” writes Lucinda De Laroque in the book Paradise Found.

During the Njonjo Commission of Inquiry, it was alleged that Khashoggi had wanted to build an airstrip in Nanyuki that could land a Boeing 747. This was turned down since it was close to the Nanyuki airbase.

Nanyuki was always full of drama with these Khashoggi girls: “(He) would take them to the boutique, turn to the girls, who by now resembled a pack of drooling bloodhounds, and instruct them that they had five minutes. A mad scramble ensued as the girls leapt around clutching and grabbing an assortment of gifts … as if their acquisition was a matter of life and death.”

As scandals relating to his excesses started to emerge — and Charles Njonjo’s star waned —Khashoggi found little comfort in Kenya. Njonjo was one of the directors at Ol Pejeta and as his name featured prominently in the inquiry, Khashoggi kept off Kenya.

Rather than see the club fall, it was in September 1985 sold to yet another controversial figure, Tiny Rowland — once accused by Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister, as being "the unacceptable face of capitalism". As chairman of Lonrho, Rowland courted African dictators to survive and make money, and as his empire started to collapse — he decided to sell the club. The era of Lonrho was not as colourful, as focus turned to his other scandals that included an attempt to grab part of Uhuru Park.

From Ryan to Rowland, the Mt Kenya Safari Club has enough stories.

Jkamau@ke.nationmedia.com @johnkamau1

That's pretty wild. I heard all about Khashoggi when I was on ol Pejeta - including the stories of the hunting and the airstrip. As a matter of fact we drove down part of what was supposed to be the strip. Didn't know he owned Mt Kenya Safari Club though.

https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/t...-safari-club-3785280


The Citizen News East Africa News
Sex, gamblers and Mafia: The untold story of Nanyuki’s Mt Kenya Safari Club

SUNDAY APRIL 17 2022



Summary
Ryan worked with the Italian Mafia, at least the Chicago-based underworld, also known as the Mob, and they had turned the Mt Kenya Safari Club into one of their African hideouts – at least in the 60s and 70s, when he still operated the high-class club.


SNJOHNKAMAU By John Kamau
More by this Author

Ray Ryan, an eccentric gambler, had stepped out of the gym and now was sitting in his luxury Mark V Lincoln Continental ready to drive home.

As the self-made dollar millionaire turned on the ignition, a massive blast that shook the entire neighbourhood in Evansville, Indiana, blew him up. The former owner of Nanyuki’s exclusive Mt Kenya Safari Club, the hideout of billionaires, was dead.

The Mafia, whom he once cavorted with, and later double-crossed, had finally caught up with him.

Ryan worked with the Italian Mafia, at least the Chicago-based underworld, also known as the Mob, and they had turned the Mt Kenya Safari Club into one of their African hideouts – at least in the 60s and 70s, when he still operated the high-class club.

Those said to have been given membership included Gerardo “Jerry” Catena, a member of the ruthless Italian mafia family whose kingpin was Vito Genovese, Tommy Eboli, who was gunned down in July 1972, and Pasquale Eboli, a drug dealer and close associate of the Genovese family. Ryan, operated within these networks of sleaze, sex and vice.

An oil millionaire, and touted as one of the richest men in the world then, Ryan, whose other business partners were film actor William Holden and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann, had owned this piece of Africa by chance.



Previously known as Mawingo Hotel (a corruption of the name Mawingu – meaning clouds), Ryan had apparently been taken to the Nanyuki hotel to convalesce following a hunting accident that had left him with an injured eye.

There, and with a near mono-eye, he fell in love with this little paradise, teeming with wildlife and with the misty peaks of Mt Kenya visible in the background.

Stories and histories

“Jeeesus, I love this place, I’m going to buy it,” he had quipped to his two companions, Terry Mathews and Tony Archer. And when he told his fellow billionaires Holden and Hirschmann of what he thought — he was surprised to find they harboured the same thoughts.

Mt Kenya Safari Club, now owned by Kenyan billionaire Humphrey Kariuki, has its stories and histories. Ryan bought the hotel from Jack Block, the son of Israeli entrepreneur Abraham Block, whose Block Hotels owned the New Stanley and the Norfolk in Nairobi. Jack had bought it at an auction after one of the owners, Rhoda Prud’homme left for America.

Previously married to a New York Jewish millionaire, the flamboyant Rhoda Lewisohn had arrived in Kenya to visit a girlfriend at Wanjohi Valley — the Happy Valley — where sex, drugs, and drunkenness among white settlers was the order of the day.

It was while on safari that she fell in love with a French playboy Gabriel Prud’homme, 15 years younger.

The short of the story is she went back to the US, divorced her husband, got a settlement of £20,000 a year and started looking for a place to settle with Gabriel. That is how they bought the Nanyuki property from a widow, Mrs Myra Wheeler – whose only condition was that Gabriel flies to France, have Wheeler’s husband’s body cremated and return to Nanyuki with the ashes. That is how Gabriel and Rhoda bought the property in 1938.

With no income, Gabriel had an annual allowance of £6000 from Rhoda and being that he was a Casanova, Rhoda would always fine him £200 every time she caught him in bed with another woman. Soon, Gabriel was in debt. In the early 1940s, the marriage collapsed and Rhoda returned to the US where she bought a beach property. She left the Nanyuki property to Gabriel who apparently died in 1948 with no will. That is how it was auctioned — and bought by Jack Block.

Jack was also running the tour company Ker and Downey, one of the oldest safari operators in Africa. It was here, at Jack’s office, according to legend, that Ryan offered to buy the hotel.

“Take it for £50,000,” Jack offered jokingly – at the time it was an exorbitant sum. He was known to have turned down a £26,000 offer.

Ray Ryan

“Deal,” Ray, perhaps, replied, to Jack’s surprise.

And with that, the construction of the modern day Mt Kenya Safari Club started, as the three millionaires, and their wives, supervised the renovations and extensions, pouring thousands of dollars into the project, even as the Mau Mau war continued in the vicinity. On June 21, 1959, what was billed as ‘the most prestigious tourist enterprise’ opened its doors.

“We deal with the very, very, special, we are not in the shoe business,” Ray jested to the press. But the club was only reserved for their guests. There were, however, charter members such as Sir Winston Churchill and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Others would be Lord Delamere, the Earl of Portsmouth, Duke of Manchester, first man in the moon Neil Armstrong, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Conrad Hilton, President Omar Bongo, the Saudi Arabian royal family – and any dollar millionaire they liked.

“Membership was so exclusive, it was said, that even the insects dressed for dinner,” one writer wrote.

But besides being an oilman, Ray was also a gambler, and his other social circles, besides some of the reigning billionaires, were hunters and playboys – those who loved fun, escapades and wild parties. Nanyuki offered more than the £50,000 that he paid to own the hotel — and the thousands of dollars he poured into it.

When the FBI learnt that some of the chieftains of the Mafia in Chicago had been given membership to the Mt Kenya Safari Club, they started investigations. The presence of the Mafia in such a high-end hotel would have surprised anyone. Ray quickly destroyed the membership records of the club and was indicted, at a Los Angeles court, for criminal contempt of court. Also indicted was his Swiss business partner, the 48-year-old Hirschmann.

Italian mafia

The connection with the Italian mafia was through the Chicago Outfit, a gambling hit-squad that was once controlled by the legendary Al Capone, the crime boss of Chicago, in the 1920s until he was imprisoned aged 33. Although regarded as one of America’s most notorious gangsters of the 20th century, Al Capone did not last long in prison, because a combination of syphilis and gonorrhoea destroyed his brain and he was released to go and die.

It is said Johns Hopkins University Hospital refused to put him on the trials for the new penicillin drug because of his reputation.

But even after Al Capone’s death, Chicago Outfit continued to operate and Ray Ryan had friends in its circles. One of these was Marshall (Johnny Shoes) Caifano, a senior member of the Chicago Outfit who supplemented his tiny size with notoriety and extortion, according to the Chicago Tribune.

It is members of this group of kidnappers, hit-men and extortionists, who had been given membership at the Mt Kenya Safari Club. The matter had become public in 1969 when the court in California asked for the club’s documents belonging to Kenya-registered Ryan Investments Ltd and Mawingu Ltd, to get to the bottom of the Mafia connection with the club.

Ryan is said to have destroyed the documents and in July 1970, he was found guilty of “altering business records to conceal proof that he gave members of the Mafia free membership at the club”.

But that did not destroy the club’s reputation. Ryan Investment, which was being investigated, soon became Gazelle Holdings Ltd. It appears that Ryan sold his interests to himself. By 1974, the club’s overseas membership was 300 millionaires, who were paying $1000 as entry fee per visit and $37 a day.

But it is Ryan’s death that shocked everyone. The story was that while playing poker with Greek millionaire Nick Dandolos at a Las Vegas casino, some of the Mafiosi alleged that he cheated and that is why Dandolos lost a $550,000 fortune. The Mafia then told Dandolos that he was duped, and Ryan agreed to pay $25,000 to Dandolos, and the Mafia started to extort and blackmail him.

That might explain why he always had a bodyguard — Fred — even in Nanyuki.

And that is how Caifano came into the picture in 1964 — by trying to extort Ryan some $60,000 a year as protection fee. Ryan asked his friend, John Drew, whether he should pay. He was told to pay.

However, incensed after meeting with Caifano, Ryan, in a risky move, informed the police. He would later testify against the Italian-American extortionist, and his friend Charles Delmonico, and had Caifano sent to jail until 1970. Aware that Caifano would revenge, now that he was free, Ryan offered to pay him $1 million as compensation. How much protection money he paid is not known.

Killing of Ryan

It was alleged in a separate case that Caifano told another Mafia underworld leader Joey Lombardo: "Let's take the million and kill him anyway." It is thought that it was Lombardo who organised the killing of Ryan after he stopped making the payoffs demanded by Caifano.

Tired of Nanyuki and the Mafia, and with age slowing him down, Ryan sold his stake to his friend, the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. On October 18, 1977, three months later, Ryan was assassinated.



Khashoggi was in a class of his own: His entourage, flying in choppers and small planes would have blondes in tow, Egyptian belly dancers, an orchestra, a masseur, a retinue of girlfriends, some of them 17-year-olds, and Korean bodyguards. They would occupy all the cottages – while the spillovers would be taken to his other hideout, the Ol Pejeta.

Ray’s other partner, Holden, would later die a lonely death at his luxury Santa Monica flat in California where he had slid and hit a bedside table. His body was discovered after four days.

Post Script: On July 19, 2008, years after Khashoggi had sold the Safari Club, he one day arrived in New York handcuffed like a criminal. The end had started, and on June 6 2017, the man who was later eulogised by The Independent as “the ‘whoremonger’ whose arms deals funded a playboy life of decadence and ‘pleasure wives’ died.

It was as if the club was a cursed investment.

jkamau@ke.nationmedia.com @johnkamau1

Someone should write a book. This is better than an over the top Wilbur Smith novel.

Great story and some interesting facts ..

make a great movie

I stayed there in the '90s - very atmospheric but I wasn't aware of the history then. You could catch trout in the lakes and of course "the mountain" was right there - there were bushbuck and buff right out side the door.

Its pretty similar in atmosphere to the Muthaiga and Mufindi clubs - or was.

I'd better not go back....

What a Great Story!!... Last I knew it was William Holden's hang out!!