Aristotle Onassis

Aristotle Socrates Onassis (/oʊˈnæsɪs/, US also /-ˈnɑː-/; Greek: Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης, romanized: Aristotélis Onásis, pronounced [aristoˈtelis oˈnasis]; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975) was a Greek and Argentine business magnate. He amassed the world's largest privately owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. He was married to Athina Mary Livanos, had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas and was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Onassis was born in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire to Greek parents and fled the city with his family to Greece in 1922 in the wake of the burning of Smyrna. He moved to Argentina in 1923 and established himself as a tobacco trader and later a shipping owner during the Second World War. Moving to Monaco, Onassis fought Prince Rainier III for economic control of the country through his ownership of SBM and its Monte Carlo Casino. In the mid-1950s, he sought to secure an oil shipping arrangement with Saudi Arabia and engaged in whaling expeditions. In the 1960s, Onassis attempted to establish a large investment contract—Project Omega—with the Greek military junta and sold Olympic Airways, which he had founded in 1957. He was greatly affected by the death of his son, Alexander, in 1973 and died two years later.

Aristotle Socrates Onassis was born in 1906 in Karataş, a suburb of the Ottoman port city of Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey) in Anatolia to Greek parents, Socrates Onassis and Penelope Dologlou. Aristotle had one sister, Artemis, and two half-sisters, Kalliroi and Merope, by his father's second marriage following Penelope's death (1912). Socrates Onassis became a successful shipping entrepreneur and sent his children to prestigious schools. When Aristotle graduated from the local Evangelical Greek School at the age of 16, he spoke four languages: Greek (his native language), Turkish, Spanish, and English.

Smyrna was occupied by Greece (1919–1922) in the aftermath of the Allied victory in World War I, but then Smyrna was re-taken by Turkey during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). The Onassis family's substantial property holdings were lost, causing them to become refugees fleeing to Greece after the Great fire of Smyrna in 1922. During this period, Onassis lost three uncles, an aunt and her husband, Chrysostomos Konialidis and their daughter, who were burned to death in a church in Akhisar where 500 Christians were seeking shelter from the Great Fire of Smyrna. The Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 was devastating for the Onassis family. His father was imprisoned and his business was transferred to Turkish ownership. The rest of the family fled to Greece where they had to stay in an outdoor refugee camp.^{[citation needed]}

In 1923, Onassis returned to Istanbul with $250 in his pocket. In August of that year, he arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Nansen passport, and got his first job as a telephone operator with the British United River Plate Telephone Company, while following studies in commerce and port-duty administration at Aduanas Argentinas. He later became an entrepreneur, creating an Argentine import-export company, going into business for himself and making a fortune importing English-Turkish tobacco to Argentina. He reportedly told Maria Callas that he made his fortune in Buenos Aires by forming a shipping company used for trafficking heroin. He obtained Argentine citizenship in 1929. Eventually he established his first shipping trading company in Buenos Aires, Astilleros Onassis. After gaining his first fortune in Argentina, he expanded his shipping business worldwide and relocated to New York City, United States, where he built up his shipping businesses empire while keeping offices in Buenos Aires and Athens. His legacy in Buenos Aires was the creation of a shipping empire and a Hellenic Culture Fund providing youth scholarships and an academic international exchange program between Argentina, Greece, Monaco and the United States; the programs are funded and administered by the Onassis Foundation and were eventually under the managing direction of his daughter Christina Onassis.

Onassis built up a fleet of freighters and tankers that eventually exceeded seventy vessels. Most of the fleet operated under flags of convenience where laws and regulations are looser than those of the owners' country. More austere regulations in countries such as the United States, which afforded higher wages and safety standards, allowed access to domestic routes with higher freight rates but at far greater running expense. As was then common practice in international shipping, Onassis's fleet had mostly Panamanian and Liberian flags and sailed tax-free while operating at low cost. This and his astute business sense helped Onassis earn handsome profits in the highly competitive shipping market. Onassis made large profits when the Big Oil companies like Mobil, Socony, and Texaco signed long-term contracts known as time charters at fixed prices before the stock market fell.

The high profitability of the Onassis fleet has been attributed in large part to his disregard for standards that normally govern international shipping. For example, after his Liberian-registered tanker SS Arrow ran aground and spilled oil into Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia in 1970, still the most significant oil spill off Canada's East Coast (about 25% of the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989), there was a Commission of Inquiry. Led by Patrick McTaggart-Cowan, executive director of the Science Council of Canada, the Commission found that the Arrow had been operating with almost none of its navigation equipment serviceable: "radar had ceased to function an hour before the ship struck; the echo sounder had not been in working condition for two months; and the gyrocompass... had a permanent error of three degrees west. The officer on watch at the time of the accident, the ship's third officer, "had no license" and none of the crew had any navigational skill except the master, "and there are even doubts about his ability."

Onassis arrived in the Mediterranean principality of Monaco in 1953 and began to purchase the shares of Monaco's Société des bains de mer de Monaco (SBM) via the use of front companies in the tax haven of Panama, and took control of the organisation in the summer of that year. Onassis moved his headquarters into the Old Sporting Club on Monaco's Avenue d'Ostende shortly after taking control of the SBM. The SBM was a significant owner of property in Monaco: its assets included the Monte Carlo Casino, the Monaco Yacht Club, the Hôtel de Paris and a third of the country's acreage. Onassis's takeover of the SBM was initially welcomed by Monaco's ruler, Prince Rainier III, as the country required investment, but Onassis and Rainier's relationship had deteriorated by 1962 in the wake of the boycott of Monaco by the French President, Charles de Gaulle.