His ancestry can be traced back to 1920s or 30s when his family set up their home in what's today Turkey after leaving Lebanon, but then returned to Lebanon after Ataturk's policies discriminating against Christians. Before he was born, his family set up an oil mill for groundnut processing in Lebanon in 1941. His father, George Khalil, died in 1970, leaving behind two sons, him [Ely] and Bernard, and was said to have bequeathed £20 million to Ely.[2]