Wafic Saïd

Saïd was the youngest son of Rida Saïd, a prominent Syrian ophthalmologist who was the Syrian Minister for Higher Education and who had founded the Syrian University in Damascus in 1926 under the request of the then King Faisal.

Saïd's father died when he was still a child, and after initial schooling by Jesuits in Beirut, Lebanon, Saïd studied at the Institute of Bankers in London.

Saïd had been offered a place at the University of Cambridge, but was unable to take up the place as a result of political instability in Syria in which his family's assets were sequestrated.

Wafic Rida Saïd (وفيق رضا سعيد) (born 21 December 1939) is a Syrian-Saudi-Canadian arms dealer, financier, and philanthropist, who has resided for many years in Monaco.

Saïd was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1939 to a prominent Syrian family.

Saïd's grandfather had served in the Turkish army during the Ottoman period, reaching the rank of general and was a colonial governor of Ottoman Syria.

Saïd finally left Syria amidst the 1963 Syrian coup d'état.

Saïd described the atmosphere in Syria at the time as being similar to 'the Terror in the French Revolution' in which 'young men were being rounded up.' In Switzerland Saïd worked for the Union de Banque Suisse (now UBS), and later the Banque Commerciale Arabe SA, before his return to England.

Saïd established two restaurants serving Middle Eastern cuisine in London in 1967, including Caravanserai on Kensington High Street, the restaurants were sold in 1969.

In 1969, Saïd married Rosemary Thompson, whom he had met in Switzerland, and they had three children together; two sons, Karim and Khaled, and a daughter, Rasha.

Saïd moved to Saudi Arabia in 1969.

Saïd lived in Syria until his early twenties before he left Syria for Switzerland where he worked as a banker, before making his fortune in the Saudi Arabian construction industry in the 1970s.

Saudi Arabia lacked much modern infrastructure at the time, and large infrastructure projects were subsequently funded by the rising price of oil in the early 1970s.

During this period of time, he founded and invested in companies that supported large-scale infrastructural projects.

Saïd came to public prominence after helping facilitate the Al-Yamamah arms deal between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.

In 1981, their son Karim died in an accident at the home of Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia.

Saïd was attending a ceremony at the prince's house at the time to receive Saudi citizenship by royal decree.

To honour his son Saïd established the Karim Rida Saïd Foundation to help disadvantaged children and young people of the Middle East.

He established the Saïd Foundation in 1982 and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford in 1996 with an initial £20 million donation to the University.

Saïd owns several properties worldwide, including Tusmore Park in Oxfordshire, but is officially a resident of Monaco.

Saïd is a Foundation Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

The Karim Rida Saïd Foundation was established in 1982 by Wafic and Rosemary Saïd in memory of their son.

Saïd assisted the future Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with securing a place in Britain to study ophthalmology in 1992, and was acquainted with the Anglo-Syrian family of Assad's wife, Asma al-Assad (née Akhras).

Saïd was ambassador and head of the delegation of St Vincent and the Grenadines to UNESCO from 1996 to 2018.

Saïd also previously served as St Vincent and the Grenadines ambassador to the Holy See.

His acceptance speech in 2000 was music to my ears.

He said he wanted to reform the legal system, revoke the [now 50-year-old] emergency laws, and fight corruption.' Saïd helped introduce Western politicians and businesspeople to Syria, and helped push for political reform in the country.

It was renamed the Saïd Foundation in 2008.

It is an English charity.

Visiting Syria in 2011 at the advent of the Syrian uprisings in response to the Arab Spring, Saïd told Asma that 'the winds of change are contagious.

Please tell the President to promise free elections.

He must be the champion of change.'

Saïd was appalled by the resulting Syrian Civil War and was summoned to see Bashar al-Assad in June 2011 as he wished to gauge Western views of the conflict.

Saïd implored Assad to enact promised reforms and to engage with his political opponents.

Saïd welcomed the Arab Spring and wished for a secular government in Egypt modelled on that of Turkey's.

In a 2012 interview with Charles Moore in The Spectator, Saïd said that he had found Bashar '...civilised, nice, polished', and that he admired Asma as 'a caring person'.

Saïd welcomed Bashar's ascension to the Presidency of Syria following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, feeling it was Syria's 'only salvation.

In March 2016, Saïd was told by British banking firm Barclays that he could no longer bank with them, despite having been a long-standing customer; the BBC reported that "The bank is understood to be concerned about holding accounts that are linked to what are described as 'high-risk countries'".

In response, Saïd said he would be taking legal action against Barclays.

Those proceedings were settled by June 2016.