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Dictators who love gold a brief history
Bethan McKernanJun 07, 2015 Your common-or-garden dictator has a tendency towards eccentricity as well as cruelty. Self-indulgent antics, personality cults and ostentatious tastes are par for the course, whether we’re talking renaming a month after yourself a la Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov, or Kim Jong-il’s insistence that he invented the hamburger... in 2009. Most of all though, autocrats lust after shiny things. But something really bad happens when you combine that magpie-instinct with unfettered access to state coffers. We found out this week that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited the leader of the opposition to verify that there are no golden toilet seats in his new 1,150-room palace, which critics insist was built (at a cost of £406million) illegally. This really happened. While Erdogan is an elected official, his violent crackdown on demonstrations, blanket ban of Twitter and YouTube, and continued denial of the Armenian genocide all bear the hallmarks of an authoritarian ruler - besides which, you know you’ve got a real dictator on your hands when they (allegedly) cover sanitary items in precious metals. While we’re waiting for an answer on Erdogan’s toilet, we decided to take a look at the company he’s keeping. Presenting the six autocrats with the worst cases of the Midas Touch: Muammar Gaddafi
The undisputed bling king had a thing for golden guns - famously, a rebel brandished a gold-plated pistol that was taken from his dead body during the 2011 revolution in Libya. Other items found in his house included a golden AK-47, a golden fly swatter and a golden sofa, shaped like a mermaid. Seriously. Saddam Hussein
When the Iraqi dictator’s palace was sacked after the US invasion in 2003, troops found gold-plated toilet brushes, golden toilets, and up to millions of pounds' worth of gold bars hidden inside a fuel tanker. Bizarrely, though, the chandeliers were plastic. Keep reading...Show less Woman disgusted after husband leaves her for her daughter and starts a family
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