Sheikhs, Lies and Real Estate: The Untold Story of Dubai Read Online Free Page A

and every promoter’s best friends: the infamous sheikhs.
    The sheikhs were Arab businessmen, nonchalant royals
and thrill-seeking oil barons who left behind their unsuspecting wives (many
had more than one) to head to London for a summer of unspoken indulgence and
excess, far from the judgemental eyes of their conservative societies. They
were usually from one of the oil-rich Gulf States – Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar or the
United Arab Emirates – where most of the ‘evil’ vices of the West were
forbidden by the strict Islamic regimes.
    They would ship their customised Ferrari and
Aston Martin sports cars over for the weekend to race down Park Lane and valet-park
pretentiously outside the entrances of the most exclusive clubs and
restaurants. They stayed in the penthouses of the luxurious Park Lane hotels
and they dined in the finest Michelin-starred restaurants. The sheikhs were
gaudy, ostentatious, often overweight, terribly dressed (albeit drenched in
designer labels) and spoke poor English. But despite their shortcomings, there
was one thing about them that kept restaurant owners and club promoters salivating
across London: their bulging wallets brimming with cash, waiting to be
squandered.
    Luckily, The Rooms was one of their favourite
London hotspots and Gino did everything in his power to ensure that their every
whim and desire was attended to every Friday and Saturday night. They reserved
the best VIP tables, smoked the finest cigars and ordered the most expensive
champagne. And with the excessive spending came a harem of gorgeous women:
Russians, Italians, Lebanese and English, all competing for attention and
desperate to be spoilt for the night. Seldom were they disappointed, and many
found their night ending in the penthouse suite of a Mayfair or Knightsbridge hotel.
    The sheikhs’ decadent lifestyles fascinated me.
I was soon on a first-name basis with many of them, as they entrusted me to
take care of their every need while they partied into the night. The tips alone
would be enough for me to live well for months, so I did whatever was required
to keep them spending. I was sure it helped that I looked a little Middle
Eastern as they probably saw me as one of them, although when they spoke to me
in Arabic I always just nodded or pretended I couldn’t hear. After a few
glasses of champagne, they didn’t seem to mind.
    I lived my dual existence for over two years,
but as my university days drew to an end, the pressure was mounting to make the
all-important decision I had been dreading: a future career path. The ultimate
dream for most of my peers at Oxford was to sell their souls in a Faustian pact
to an investment bank or magic-circle law firm in the city of London. But a
grim existence of sitting in a poorly lit office in front of a flickering
computer screen while it sucked out my soul for twelve hours a day simply
didn’t excite me. I wanted wealth, freedom and prominence like the sheikhs, and
my new-found significance as a club promoter had given me confidence that I
could make money without compromising my integrity. So while my classmates
shamelessly whored themselves to the corporate reps who flooded the campus like
vampires looking for virgins, I was notably absent. I had bigger plans.
    But as the sheikhs left London for the Gulf over
the winter, business at The Rooms dwindled and the tips dried up, I grudgingly
accepted that club promoting was not my life’s calling and I needed to find
something else. I was also constantly being reminded by my mother of the need
to build a future, and with mounting student debts I decided I had no choice
but to bite my tongue and take a ‘real’ job.
    In the autumn of 2004, I reluctantly joined an investment
bank in the City of London as a trading desk assistant. It was apparently a
position that many graduates would have killed for, but for me it was a well-paid
time-filler while I pondered what I really wanted to do with the rest of my
life.
    The crux of my new