Settlement: $874M
Cost/Day: $126K
One of the earliest billion-dollar-class settlements, from the Saudi arms dealer.
Adnan Khashoggi was a flamboyant Saudi arms broker whose connections to governments on every continent made him, at his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, the self-styled richest man in the world. Soraya Khashoggi, born Sandra Daly in Britain, converted to Islam and married Adnan in 1961. She was by his side as he conducted deals worth hundreds of millions — sometimes billions — of dollars, entertaining royalty, heads of state, and celebrities on his superyacht and in his palaces. Their lifestyle was a byword for excess.
Adnan's fortune was built on commissions from arms deals brokered between Western defence contractors and Middle Eastern governments, particularly Saudi Arabia. He acted as an intermediary, facilitating transactions involving fighter jets, military equipment, and weapons systems, collecting fees that made him extraordinarily rich during the Cold War era. At his peak, his personal fortune was estimated at several billion dollars.
Adnan and Soraya married in 1961 and spent nearly two decades living one of the most lavish lifestyles the twentieth century produced. Their marriage finally ended in 1980, after Soraya had witnessed decades of extravagance — and reportedly Adnan's numerous extramarital relationships. By the time of the divorce, Adnan's business empire was at its zenith.
Soraya received a settlement estimated at around $874 million — a figure that, in the early 1980s, was without precedent in divorce history. The payout reflected both the scale of Adnan's assets and Soraya's knowledge of — and entanglement in — his business dealings, which gave her considerable leverage during negotiations.
Soraya had been an intimate participant in Adnan's world for decades, and she understood his financial arrangements in detail. Her legal team was able to identify assets across multiple jurisdictions, and the threat of prolonged litigation — which could have exposed sensitive business dealings — gave both parties reasons to reach a substantial settlement relatively quickly.
Adnan's business empire began to unravel in the late 1980s and 1990s through a combination of declining oil revenues, the exposure of his role in the Iran-Contra affair, and general overextension. He filed for bankruptcy in 1989. The settlement he paid Soraya, vast as it was, proved to be a relatively small part of his financial decline.
The Khashoggi settlement is historically significant as one of the earliest examples of a truly enormous divorce payout — predating the era of tech billionaires by decades. In real terms, adjusting for inflation, it rivals many of the more recent mega-settlements. It established the template that later courts and lawyers would follow when dealing with globally mobile, asset-rich individuals.
Adnan Khashoggi's nephew, Dodi Fayed, died alongside Princess Diana in Paris in 1997. Adnan himself appeared in news reports connected to the Iran-Contra scandal and was briefly arrested in Switzerland in 1989 at the request of American authorities. Soraya went on to live a considerably quieter life after the divorce, far from the headlines her marriage had generated.