Playboy Saif Gaddafi, the Tory donor and girls in bikinis – how the Libyan dictator's son does business
Smiling, in his swimming trunks, the sea calm and sparkling, the heir-apparent to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi relaxes with his minders and a key business associate whose firm gave more than £125,000 to the Conservatives in the last 18 months.
These extraordinary pictures, some taken by an unknown bikini-clad young woman – one of several scantily-dressed girls who joined the party – are a unique glimpse of the playboy lifestyle of the Western-educated son of the Libyan dictator.
Now, 12 months on, Saif and his father are in hiding, targeted by allied air strikes backing the popular uprising against their regime.
Befriended by the Duke of York and once a guest at Buckingham Palace, Saif shocked those who feted him in the West by claiming the civil war now raging across Libya was caused by Islamists and the "drunken and drugged" and echoing his father in promising tens of thousands dead and "a river of blood".
The London School of Economics graduate was in South America in March 2010 for a guided tour around the Brazilian aircraft manufacture Embraer's factory and then enjoyed several days' holiday with his close friend and business associate Marwan Salloum.
Mr Salloum is a London-based lawyer and vice president of Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC), a multinational which, before the recent uprising, was part of a major consortium revamping Tripoli airport and upgrading the terminal at Misurata, scene of some of the most intense fighting in recent days.
The international construction company, which also runs property and travel firms in Britain, was labelled a "complete disgrace" by a High Court judge for failing to comply with court orders freezing its assets.
Earlier this month it was found guilty of contempt of court and is facing massive fines unless it pays around £30 million owed to former business partners and in legal costs.
Since October 2009 CCC has been making substantial donations to the Tory Party, with £123,000 paid to Conservative Central Office and another £2,535 to Andrew Rosindell, a former vice chairman of the Party and a member of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
The firm, owned by two Palestinian businessmen, also paid Stephen Byers, the disgraced former Cabinet Minister, as a consultant. Mr Byers, a close friend of Tony Blair, was secretly filmed admitting he was "a cab for hire" for lobbyists, offering to use his contacts to help their businesses in return for large fees.
The pictures of the Brazil trip show the Gaddafis' private jet, the same Airbus A340 used by the dictator to fly the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi home to Libya after he was released from prison in Scotland in 2009.
The aircraft arrived in London, waiting to pick up Mr Gaddafi and his entourage, on Mar 6 last year. He was whisked through security by Harrods Aviation, which runs the VIP ground services at Luton and Stansted airports.
Mr Gadaffi's "holiday snaps" begin by showing him and half-a-dozen overweight minders smiling for the camera, sipping from coconut shells, and then being taken around an aircraft factory in São José dos Campos, where he apparently finalised several deals with the firm.
Carlos Camargo, a spokesman for Embraer, said: "I remember that visit very well because I received them together with Embraer's commercial team. Today we have three aircraft from the E-Jet family flying in Libya, and at the time of the visit the company (also) had other business interests in the country."
After the tour Mr Gaddafi and his minders clambered into a helicopter taxi and were flown to the coast where they were met by Mr Salloum and several unidentified young women aboard a luxury yacht.
The pictures portray a smiling Mr Salloum in black T-shirt and floppy hat as the motor yacht sails off. His mirrored sunglasses show the reflection of the photographer, apparently Mr Gaddafi himself, and a young woman in a revealing bikini and sun hat perched on the vessel's hand rail.
Another image shows a bare-chested Mr Gaddafi lounging on a white cushioned seat in the wheel house of the vessel. He is wearing tight-fitting brown and blue swimming shorts and designer sunglasses, while he gives a thumbs-up sign to the photographer.
Next to him sits an unknown, overweight man, wearing a T-shirt and Ferrari baseball cap. His sunglasses again reflect the photographer and at least two, possibly three, more young women. One of the women, apparently naked, lies on her front on the deck, propping herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair spilling down her back.
Others pictures show Mr Gaddafi standing on the bow of the ship as it approaches a deserted coastline of golden sands, palm trees and jungle, before the party disembarks from the yacht to watch torchlit samba dancers in the grounds of a colonial villa.
Later in the trip Mr Gaddafi and his minders, together with Mr Salloum, also visited an isolated, luxury retreat in the north of the country where guests are offered the chance to explore the surrounding wilderness and go diving through a huge underwater cave system.
The pictures show Mr Gaddafi and his friends traversing a river swinging from a "zip line" rope slide and then clambering down to look at the entrance to the underwater cave system, the dictator's son wearing an LSE-branded baseball cap.
Last week Mr Salloum and other senior figures in CCC, including Said Khoury, the firm's president, failed to answer questions about the trip or CCC and Mr Salloum's relationship with Mr Gaddafi.
CCC is one of the world's biggest contractors. It helped to build the Abu Ghraib prison and is the largest engineering firm in the Middle East. Last year its revenues reached $4.2 billion (£2.6 billion). In partnership with British Gas, CCC has negotiated a 20-year deal to exploit the natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza.
Last week it also failed to respond to questions about the High Court's contempt of court ruling against the firm and inquiries about why it had decided to fund the Conservative Party and if that relationship would continue.
The High Court found the firm guilty of nine counts of contempt of court and a further count was also partially proven. In a 113-page judgement Mr Justice Christopher Clarke said: "They have deliberately refused to honour judgments of this court ..."
Mr Salloum, one of the firm's UK directors and a close relative of the owners, was named in the judgement as having signed a set of accounts whose validity was questioned by the court.
At a previous hearing earlier this year Mrs Justice Gloster said: "I think that it is a complete disgrace that a large and solvent operation, such as the defendants and their holding company involved in this case, should flout in this way the orders of this court.
"I think it is a complete disgrace and it is very, very rarely found in this court."
The Conservative party has defended its decision to accept money from the company, saying: “We are satisfied that all donations to the Conservative Party from CC Property Company are permissible.”
The Telegraph
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