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Born to a family of modest means in the Lebanese port city of Sidon, Hariri attended elementary and secondary school in his city and pursued his business administration studies at the Beirut Arab University.
After training as a teacher he left Lebanon in 1965 to work in Saudi Arabia for a construction company. There he married Nazik Audeh in 1965. In 1969, Hariri established his own construction company CICONEST.
Hariri accumulated vast amounts of wealth in a short period of time and emerged as a powerful construction tycoon.
In 1978 Hariri was made a citizen of Saudi Arabia by the Saudi royal family as a reward for the high quality of his entrepreneurial services, and became the kingdom's emissary to Lebanon. Hariri then went on to become Saudi Arabia's leading entrepreneur, acquiring Oger in 1979, and founding Oger International, which is based in Paris.
His interests extended across banking, real estate, oil, industry and telecommunications. Rafik and Nazik Hariri had seven children and seven grandchildren. In 1993 he founded the television station Future TV in Beirut and purchased stakes in several Lebanese newspapers. He founded his own newspaper Al Mustaqbal (The Future).
He was also the biggest shareholder in Solidere, the joint-stock company that almost single handedly transformed and revived central Beirut following the Lebanese civil war. Hariri returned to Lebanon in 1992 as prime minister. He served in the post until 1998, then again from 2000 until late 2004.
However, amid the political crisis brought on by the extension of President Emile Lahoud's term, which was brought about by pressure from Syria, Hariri resigned as Prime Minister. wikipedia.com
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