There are fortunes that are built with decades of work and others that come directly from the underground. The one of Mohammad Reza Pahlavithe last Shah to reign in Iran, belongs to the second category.
Under his kingdom there was one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, and during almost four decades in power, black gold he became the source of immense personal wealth that, at the time of his death in 1980, was estimated at some $2 billion. Adjusting it for four decades of inflation, it is the equivalent of about 7.2 billion dollars currently.
What makes this story unique is not only the magnitude of the money accumulated, but also how that heritage was built. from the shadow through opaque foundations, hidden business holdings, and oil revenue streams that never appeared in any official ledger. a fortune as big as it is controversialbuilt on the oil of a country that would end up overthrowing him.
A coup d’état, a throne and the keys to the tap
As and how to collect Celebritynetworthto understand where that money came from you have to go back to 1953. That year, the CIA and the British MI6 executed the so-called Ajax operation, a coup d’état which overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized the oil industry in 1951, and returned the Shah to power with almost absolute authority.
After the coup d’étatthe Iranian oil industry was restructured under a consortium of Western companies. Iran gained a larger share of revenue than before, but control of production remained in the hands of foreign corporations. In this way, the West maintained control over crude oil, but the Shah now had something equally valuable: direct access to the income that this resource generated. and the income was huge.
According to published The World OrderIran has the third largest oil reserves in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. With that resource flowing non-stop, the Shah found the formula to convert national oil into his personal wealth.
According to publication CelebritynetworthIn 1962, for example, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) made a payment of $12 million in a single month to an account controlled directly by it, an amount equivalent to $117 million today. And that was just what was known from a single month.
Pahlavi Foundation: a holding company disguised as charity
On paper, the foundation bearing the Shah’s surname was a philanthropic organization dedicated to funding schools, museums and hospitals. However, in practicefunctioned more like a personal holding company of the Shah, with active interests in virtually every sector of the Iranian economy.
As and how I collected The New York Times By the late 1970s, the Shah’s foundation controlled stakes in more than 200 Iranian companies, including 17 banks, including the Bank of Omran, one of the country’s largest, 80% of Iran’s largest insurance company, 25 metallurgical companies, eight major mining operations, 25% of the country’s largest cement company, 45 construction companies, 43 agri-food companies and approximately 70% of hotel rooms in all. Iran. And that without leaving the country.
The Shah also maintained relevant stakes in international companies such as Daimler-Benz, even influencing the development of the Mercedes G Classas well as real estate properties in London, the French Riviera and Manhattan.
Palaces, airplanes and more than 140 collectible cars
With billions of dollars flowing from the oil wells and no one to stop it, the Shah He lived the life of a true emperor. The Shah spent his time among the Niavaran Palacein the north of Tehran, the Sa’dabad resort in the Alborz Mountains, and several luxury retreats on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each filled with works of art, French furniture, silk rugs and hand-carved marble.
But perhaps the most striking It was his car collection.: more than 140 luxury vehicles including custom Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris, a Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulet, a model so rare that only popes and dictators used it, and unique Lamborghini, Porsche and Cadillac prototypes.
It also had a private aircraft fleetincluding a fully customized Boeing 727 nicknamed Shahbaz that he himself occasionally flew.
His wife, Empress Farah, wore unique pieces by Dior, Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent, and for his coronation as empress in 1967, Van Cleef & Arpels designed her a crown of emeralds and diamonds with stones extracted directly from the treasures of the Iranian state. The Shah’s own crown contained more than 3,000 diamonds.
The party that accelerated a revolution
The most blatant moment of all this waste came in 1971, when the Shah organized what is considered one of the most expensive parties in history modern to celebrate the 2,500 years of the Persian monarchy.
He had a city of silk tents built in the ruins of Persepolis, with air conditioning, gardens with trees imported from France, and a complete kitchen from Maxim’s in Paris. According what was published by Times At the time, the total cost was estimated at 100 million dollars, the equivalent of about 800 million dollars today, all for three days of toasts with rivers of champagne, caviar, sculptures of peacocks and fireworks in the desert.
While the Shah entertained 600 guests including kings, presidents and aristocrats, a good part of The Iranian population was in serious trouble economical.
By the late 1970s, inflation in Iran was skyrocketing, unemployment increased, and the gap between rich and poor had become unsustainable. Observers of the time detected suspicious discrepancies in the accounting of Iranian oil: for several years of that decade, until 2 billion dollars a year disappeared leaving no trace of official currency records.
The 1978 protests They were not just political, they were against the Shah’s corruption with diverted money and against his obscene ostentation while the people suffered. In January 1979, the Shah fled Iran as a result of the uprising of the Iranian Revolution that would lead to power to the government of the ayatollahs.
He would die the following year in exile, in Egypt, at the age of 60. His family and thousands of elite Iranians walked away with tens of billions of dollars in accumulated wealth. It is estimated that members of the Shah’s family alone took away about $4 billion, which today is equivalent to about 17.85 billion dollars.
After almost five decades of exile, his son, press from the US to recover the throne of Iran that the ayatollahs took from his father.
Image | Wikimedia Commons (Pahlavi Government, Ahmed S. Kamel), Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran)
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