Brigadier Sir James Timothy Whittington Landon, KCVO, (born 20 August 1942, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada; died 6 July 2007, Winchester, Hampshire, England) served in the British and Omani armies and was instrumental in the development of the present Sultanate of Oman. He was one of Britain's wealthiest people.
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Born to a British Brigadier General and a Canadian mother, Tim Landon attended Eastbourne College in Sussex. As a graduate of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Landon was posted to the 10th Hussars.
With his regiment, he traveled overland from Europe to Arabia and arrived in Oman in the mid-1960s. He was sent there as part of a British military operation to help Sultan Said bin Taimur defeat the Soviet-backed Dhofar Rebellion. He was stationed in the south as an intelligence officer, but was transferred to Muscat. There he became an integral part of the coup to remove the old Sultan, who in the British government's opinion had become too independent, yet backward in his thinking.
Landon, who was close to the Sultan's son Qaboos from his Sandhurst days, was allowed to visit his friend, although the Sultan had placed his son under house arrest. Convincing the son to oust his father from the throne was no easy task. The coup occurred on 23 July 1970, when Landon was twenty-seven. Said bin Taimur was confronted at his palace and told to sign over power to his son. The only confirmed casualty in this otherwise bloodless coup was the old Sultan's foot when he inadvertently shot himself. The deposed ruler was flown to London on an RAF Transport, where he died two years later in the Dorchester Hotel. It is claimed that his greatest regret was not having Landon assassinated.
Over the next fifteen years, the young officer helped his friends develop the Sultanate from a medieval backwater into a modern 20th-century state. Omani oil revenues enabled much of the country's advances and Landon became a leading advocate of "Omanisation" of the economy and government.
By 1979, Landon's position as an adviser had become a figurehead role. He returned to England, taking up a diplomatic post at the Omani embassy in London and establishing a home at Faccombe, a village near Andover in Hampshire. The title the "White Sultan" was regarded with bemusement by Landon, who maintained that Sultan Qaboos was very much in charge of Oman's destiny, and he was simply a servant and friend there to give advice. He continued to shuttle between London and Muscat until he died, his Boeing often seen arriving or leaving Farnborough,the nearest airport to his home.
Landon invested the money he had made during his time in Oman, diversifying his wealth into mineral exploration and farming in Africa, property and real estate investments in Europe and America, and a wide range of financial portfolios in global markets. His fortune was estimated at US$750 million or higher. Landon was known to be a patron of the arts and society as well as an avid conservationist, generously assisting with fundraising for foundations and charities.
Landon also played an important role as intermediary in several questionable deals like when giant telecom company Ericsson sold telecommunications equipment to Oman in the late 1990s. Ericsson's intermediary in the deal, Middle East Services, was fronted by the Swiss lawyer Egon Kiss-Borlase, who was really a front man for Landon. The connection was revealed by a joint investigation into Landon's business by the Swedish Public Television "Uppdrag granskning" and Swedish Public Radio's "Dagens Eko" in January 2007.
Landon was also behind an intermediary in another questionable deal. Valurex International, Swedish jetfighter Saab and UK defence giant BAE's intermediary in the 1999 bribery scandal where SAAB and BAE offered millions of dollars in bribes to Czech politicians to buy the Gripen jet-fighter. Egon Kiss-Borlase and his son Etienne once again played the role as front men. The real beneficiary of the money paid out to Valurex was the Austrian Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, a long time agent for BAE and a relative of Landon through Landon's wife Katalina Esterhazy Galantha. Mensdorff-Pouilly received secret commission contract of at least 81 million Swedish crowns for the final deal in 2003 when the Czech Republic leased Gripen jetfighter.
Both the Ericsson Oman deal and the SAAB/BAE deal has been the focus of several police and parliamentary investigations. By 2008 investigations had opened in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Great Britain, United States, Switzerland, and Austria. [1]
Tim Landon was also involved in the smuggling of a Bofors cannon to the sultanate of Oman in the 1980s. "Sultan Quaboos of Oman got it into his head that his security would be enhanced if his yacht was kitted out with the Bofors guns. He wanted the Bofors guns and the government in Sweden objected to this deal, and this is where Landon and his associates always came into play. If something was denied them by diplomatic channels they would take the scenic route." [2]
In 1977 Tim Landon married Katalina Esterhazy Galantha, a member of the Hungarian aristocratic House of Esterházy, noted for its felicitous marriages, great wealth, and large land-holdings, and historically loyal to the Habsburg Dynasty. The marriage produced a son, Arthur, who studied film production and has begun to be involved in his family business affairs in recent years. Arthur is, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, the wealthiest young person in Britain, with an inherited fortune of £200 million, and is "a close friend of the royal princes, William and Harry"[3].