Jocelyn Wildenstein
Jocelyn is not known just for her extravagant lifestyle she spends $60,000 on her phone bill and $547,000 on food and wine. No, what Ms. Wildenstein is famous for is her extensive cosmetic surgery to her face, intended to elicit a more catlike look. Wildenstein is rumored to have spent $4,000,000, apparently done to please her husband, who loved big cats.
She wasnt that successful though he cheated on her with a 19 year old model, leading to a divorce and a 2.5 billion dollar settlement.
Silvio Berlusconi
When you’re a billionaire you can do whatever you like: see the world, start a business, spend your weekend watching movies… anything is possible!
Silvio was the prime minister of Italy on four separate occasions, and he used is seat of wealth and power to experience all the things he wanted in life while front running media productions that kept him rolling in the green. At the height of his wealth Silvio was worth an estimated 7.7 billion dollars so it seemed like nothing was going to slow him down.
To the surprise of no one reading it this it turns out the there are some things money can’t buy, at least not without consequences, and that’s a lesson that our friend Silvio had to learn firsthand. After purchasing an underage prostitute he isn’t going to be enjoying his wealth for very much longer; he tried to cover up the affair and abused his political powers to do it, but the truth leaked out and the billionaire faces some consequences: 7 years in prison, a permanent ban from political office, and a now unforgettable reputation as a pretty weird dude.
Jeff Greene
Jeff is a member of the Democratic Party and ran during the 2010 election, and he did so with a platform that refused campaign donations.
Jeff denied any donation over one hundred dollars saying that it made him sick to see how much money influenced politics. Jeff’s claim to fame was as a real estate entrepreneur, where he made billions of dollars before meeting his wife Mei. Mei is a Chinese refugee that is 20 years younger than her husband, and who also seems to have the patience of a saint.
It turns out that Jeff is a massive fan of boxing, so when he got married in Moscow he decided to have one of his favorite boxers take part in his wedding as his best man: Mike Tyson. God’s wedding cost just over one million dollars, and it just puzzles me how a day in his works. Did he just call Mike up on the phone and ask a man he had never met to come to his wedding? Did he open his palms and say “let there be Mike?”
Lina Maria Aguiar
Lina was abandoned as a baby in front of a Bradesco bank in 1938 and happened to hit the jackpot with who picked her and adopted her: Amador Aguiar, the founder of the very bank she was sitting in front of.
Lina just so happened to become a billionaire by complete chance, and so did her two sisters who were adopted a few years after her. After Aguiar’s death in 1991 the sisters have been in a constant fight for the remainder of the banker’s will which is currently going to his second wife that he married less than five months before his death (pure coincidence I’m sure).
While Amador’s daughters are currently winning the methodology is a little questionable: Lina advocated a request to exhume the corpse of her dead father so that a DNA test could be administered. I love money as much as the next guy, but if I had to dig up my old man so that I could prove to people that I am who I say I am I may just forfeit the case.
Robert Klark Graham
After he made his billions Graham decided to embark on a journey to improve the human race by creating a sperm bank. It was no ordinary sperm bank accepting deposits only from Nobel laureates. problem is Nobel winners tend to be old, which meant their sperm is not as viable. By 1983, Grahams sperm bank was reputed to have 19 repeat genius donors, including William Bradford Shockley (1956 Nobel Prize in Physics and proponent of eugenics) and two anonymous Nobel Prize winners in science. The bank closed in 1999, two years after the death of its creator. 218 children had been born under its auspices.
Ingvar Kamprad
The founder of Ikea was a member of a fascist group when he was younger. These days he is known for his extreme frugality. Kamprad drives a 1993 Volvo 240, flies only economy class, and encourages IKEA employees always to write on both sides of a piece of paper. He recycles tea bags, and steals salt and pepper packets from restaurants Kamprad has been known to visit IKEA for a cheap meal. His home is furnished with IKEA furniture he assembled personally, he uses public transportation, and his modest home would look at home in any suburban neighborhood.
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah
The Sultan of Brunei is not one to refrain from treating himself to a ridiculously expensive car or a yacht. One of his favorite toys is an over-the-top luxurious Boeing 747-400, complete with solid gold sinks in its private lavatories. He also bought his son Prince Azim a diamond-covered Mercedes Benz.
It’s hard to find someone who is as insecure about his wealth as Hassanal is, and if you want to make him sweat just tell him that you heard his sultan neighbor just covered his entire mansions in white gold and meteorite.
David Rockefeller
A billionaire that loves cars isn’t all that uncommon, but David Rockfeller isn’t talking about cars when he says he has the largest beetle collection in the world.
David is a bug enthusiast and has spent millions upon millions of dollars to enhance his beetle collection. David said that he finds insects fascinating and says that there is nothing more worth collecting than the various forms of life that exist around the world: we agree, David, but does it really have to just be beetles?
David is a philanthropist as well as a billionaire, so it’s good to see his money getting some non-beetle love as well: his personal favorite places to donate to are the various museums that collect art and artifacts. David strongly believes in the preservation of history, and so aside from his beetle lined home are works from the finest artists to ever live: what an odd contrast! I’m not one to judge someone on their life choices, but could you imagine speaking with a family and telling them that it sucks they can’t afford to eat while signing a million dollar check to acquire a rare insect? Something about that really bugs me.
Clive Palmer
Taking his cues from Jurassic park, Palmer had plans to clone a dinosaur to attract guests to his 5 star Palmer Coolum Resort. When that fell through, he commissioned over a 100 animatronic dinosaurs to be built on the resorts golf course. His most recent planto build a replica of the doomed Titanic cruise liner. Palmers Titanic II, which is scheduled to arrive in 2016, is to be designed with authenticity in mind; the passengers will be separated by classes and forbidden to intermingle, and modern amenities like television will be unavailable.
Bidzina Ivanishvili
The 56-year-old has recently become the next Prime Minister of Georgia, though the politician has a sturdy business background in metals and banking, which made him a billionaire in Russia. Ivanishvili is a unique tycoon he lives in a glass house that has its own personal zoo of penguins. In fact, Ivanishvili has his own village in western Georgia, where his James Bond-like home rests just outside Tbilisi, the countrys capital.