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Comment by wtfwhateven | Hacker News Reader

> In 1964 Fayed arrived in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest nations, hailed as a rich sheikh from Kuwait. He romanced one of Papa Doc’s daughters and persuaded Duvalier to give him an oil concession and a contract to manage the Port-au-Prince harbour. The Duvaliers’ love affair with Fayed was short-lived. Early in 1965 the fake sheikh left Haiti, never to return. More than $100,000 (almost $1m today) was reportedly found to be missing from the port authority’s bank account.

I think portraying him as having "built his empire from the ground up" is misguided at best and very dishonest at worst.

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Please add something more substantive and less divisive than “hmmmmmmmm”. There’s so much interesting about this fellow’s life which can add some fascinating narrative here, we can all avoid cheapening it with aggression and flame wars.

fixed

Honestly even as a person who believes that anyone with a billion dollars has effectively stolen it (captured more than their personal share) from the people and systems which enabled the value-creation of their enterprises…

If I won a $1 million lottery (after taxes) I’d have no idea how to turn that into $100M. I’d probably spend 75% of it on a house, 10% of it to pay off other debts, and then be still solidly in the labor class.

The guy obviously built an empire out of nothing, through both grift and grit. His first major win may have been ingratiating himself with the Haitian leadership, but how do you do this with nothing?

I don’t admire it, but I recognize that it doesn’t just happen either. The guy didn’t really win with a lottery ticket, he did something to put the fix in at the lottery.

I completely agree with you, regardless of how he kickstarted his empire it was effectively from nothing and a bit of charisma

When in Rome, do as the Romans do

I think portraying him as having "built his empire from the ground up" (apologies if I misquoted you, I can't see your post anymore as it was flagged) is misguided at best and very dishonest at worst.

Nothing in your comment changes the fact that he started out working as a porter in Egypt

I guess you include fraud and theft as legitimate methods to build your own wealth then

Theres literally zero chance for us to know if that is true or not, you're taking the word of a blatantly corrupt government on face value. Given that, it's probably a false story and the money has gone somewhere else.

Maybe. But there's also literally zero chance for us to know if he was ever actually a porter.

What we do know is he married the sister of a billionaire in 1953...

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