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Walid Juffali, Saudi businessman – obituary
Walid Juffali, who has died aged 61, was the Saudi billionaire recently ordered to pay out £75 million in maintenance to his ex-wife Christina Estrada for her “reasonable needs”; jaw-dropping as the sum was, it was loose change to Juffali, whose family runs one of the Middle East’s largest conglomerates with a fortune estimated at some £8 billion.
Sheikh Walid was chairman of EA Juffali & Bros, founded in 1946 by his father Sheikh Ahmed and his brothers Ebrahim and Ali. The Juffalis came of the Bani Khalid tribe, rulers since the 15th century of much of what is now Iraq and eastern Saudi Arabia and historic enemies of the House of Saud. The family supplied governors of Nejd and in the late 19th century began to furnish camels to pilgrims travelling to Mecca.
Eschewing politics for commerce as the Kingdom began to develop, the Juffalis won the contract to build its first electricity plant at Taif, south-east of Mecca. Thereafter they concentrated on infrastructure projects, ferrying water by lorry from their farm to supply these. By the 1950s they had substantial cement, communications, agriculture and construction businesses.
As elsewhere in the Arab world, however, they made the bulk of their wealth by striking partnership deals with Western companies. When oil began to boom, they brought in technology, expertise and goods wanted by consumers, for instance signing a distribution deal in 1951 with Electrolux for refrigerators. In 1959, they became the exclusive agent for Mercedes and also built a factory to make Daimler-Benz trucks. Similar deals were struck with companies such as IBM, Massey-Ferguson, Siemens, Bosch and Michelin.
By the 1970s the firm was growing at 50% each year and financing expansion out of its profits rather than loans. A decade later, it was said to be the largest privately-owned business in Saudi Arabia, employing more than 50,000 people in its dozens of businesses.
Walid was the eldest of Ahmed’s four children with his wife Su’ad. He was born on April 301955 and though little is known about his early life he was probably schooled like his brother Khaled in Lebanon and then at Le Rosey, in Switzerland. Like him, too, he studied business at the University of San Diego, graduating in 1977. Towards the end of his life, he completed a doctorate in neuroscience at Imperial College, London.
After working for several decades for the family firm, he became its chairman following his father’s death in 1994. He was also chairman of Saudi American Bank and in 2005 was lined up to front the kingdom’s version of The Apprentice.
Walid worked closely with Khaled but their other brother Tarek was something of a black sheep. In 2006, he died after taking an overdose of morphine and chloral hydrate prescribed to wean him off the 30 joints of skunk cannabis he smoked each day. He had also been addicted to cocaine, heroin and Rohypnol. Tarek had attempted to beat his habit as his wife was pregnant with twins.
Walid Juffali had close links to Britain – where all his children were educated – but he only came to the attention of the press in 2000 during his first divorce. He had married in 1980 a young fellow Saudi, Basma al-Sulaiman, with whom he was reported to have had three children. They lived in a marble palace in Jeddah, where their guests included Margaret Thatcher, Sir John Major and President George W Bush.
In 2000, however, he met Christina Estrada, a model, reputed friend of Prince Andrew’s and former companion of Sol Kerzner, the South African hotel magnate and developer of Sun City. Juffali’s divorce from Basma involved legal proceedings in Britain and he was obliged to settle $40 million on her; three-quarters of this she subsequently lost in bad investments following the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.
He and Christina Estrada were married in Dubai in 2001. They had a daughter and lived a gilded life at their several houses in Britain. In 2012, however, Christina Estrada learned that she been replaced by a younger model and television presenter, Loujain Adada. Saudi law permits a man to take up to four wives. The Lebanese-born Loujain, who at 25 was 35 years younger than Juffali, was married to him in Venice in a lavish ceremony said to have cost £10 million. They had two children, although not long after their marriage Juffali learned that he had cancer.
Following their divorce in 2014, Christina Estrada, who was acknowledged by the courts to have been habitually resident in Britain, made a claim for ancillary relief. Her demand for £196 million was said to have made her legal team gasp; it included provision for a London house costing £55 million (she and Juffali had lived in a 7-bedroom converted church in Knightsbridge). She needed £1 million a year for clothes, and £600,000 for private jet hire. “I am Christina Estrada,” she said in court. “This is what I am accustomed to.”
Juffali attempted to evade her claims on the grounds that he had diplomatic immunity. This stemmed from his recent appointment as the representative of the island of St Lucia, in the Caribbean, to the International Maritime Organisation, which had its headquarters in London. The Court of Appeal ultimately judged that even if he did have immunity it did not affect the divorce proceedings.
Despite arguing that his own worth was no more than £114 million, rather than the £8 billion estimated by her lawyers, Juffali was ordered two weeks ago to pay Christina Estrada £53 million by July 29.
Taken with assets that he had already given her, such as a blue diamond ring valued at £10 million, the total value of the settlement was £75 million – the largest in British legal history. The judgement was expedited as Juffali’s health was known to be worsening and he did not appear in court himself.
His third wife and his children survive him.
Walid Juffali, born April 30 1955, died July 20 2016