| Ely Calil | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 8, 1945 Kano, Nigeria |
| Residence | London, United Kingdom |
| Ethnicity | Lebanese |
| Citizenship | British |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Net worth | £350 m (2010) |
| Religion | Greek Catholic |
| Spouse | Frances Condron Hayat Mroue Renuka Jain |
| Children | George, Katherine, Karim, May, Stefan, Yasmine |
Ely Calil (born 8 December 1945 in Kano, Nigeria) is a Lebanese businessman holding a British citizenship. He is one of the richest men in Britain; The Sunday Times Magazine estimated his wealth in 2010 to be around £350 million. [1] Calil belongs to a small group of middlemen, a few dozen at most, who quietly grease the wheels of the global energy business, brokering transactions between oil companies and governments. [2]
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Ely Calil's original source of wealth was inheritance. His father, George Calil (Kano), founded a ground oil empire and the Nigerian Oil Mills (NOM) which was later managed by Ely's younger brother Bernard Calil. After his father's death in 1970 the wealth was bequeathed to Ely and his brother Bernard. Later on Ely expanded his wealth in property and finance. He successfully negotiated a number of oil mining deals in Nigeria in the 1980s.
His powerful circle of friends includes Britain's First Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, the son of the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Baron Mark Thatcher and Lord Archer. Calil was also a very close friend to late tycoons as Sir James Goldsmith, John Aspinall and Mark Birley.
Ely Calil is a father of six including actor George Calil and has been married three times. The first wife was a daughter of American tobacco millionaire Frances Condron. They married in 1972. They have two children, George and Katherine. His second wife was a Lebanese socialite Hayat Mroue who gave him two more children, Karim and May. They divorced in 1985 and afterwards she married property tycoon Lord Peter Palumbo. He also has a son Stefan by Noor Birol but he never her married the mother. Calil's third wife was an Indian Renuka Jain with whom he has a daughter Yasmine and have also now divorced. In 2006 he sold his Chelsea home, Sloane House, for an estimated £45 million to Sir Anthony Bamford, the JCB diggers boss. He currently lives in a rented £15 million Mansion in Hampstead, London. He is known to be very private person and reclusive from publicity and doesn’t give interviews to newspapers. The press has got only one photo of him in the past forty years.[3] In 2008 a gang of burglars targeted his home in Hampstead, but were caught by police and his possessions returned to him. [4]
In 2004 Ely Calil was alleged to be the master mind and one of the financiers in the famous coup d'état in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. He is currently sought by courts both in Equatorial Guinea and South Africa. He strongly denies all allegations. Calil was generally believed to be the character nicknamed Smelly in the prison notes of Simon Mann, the leading mercenary of the planned coup-d'etat. When Simon Mann was released in 2009 it was revealed that he had made statements implicating others only after days of torture. Ely Calil has not been interviewed by any police ever.[5][6]
In 2002, Calil was arrested in Paris in connection with the Elf Aquitaine scandal which reached into the heart of French government. He denied taking bribery of £40 million and was released without any charges.[7]