Word: cardoen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Having built his business by catering to the needs of renegade regimes like Chile's and Iraq's, Cardoen has no qualms about dealing with other pariahs. He has helped South African arms companies circumvent a global embargo by putting MADE IN CHILE labels on some of their weapons as part of co-production deals. His most recent customer for cluster bombs has been the repressive regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia. In September 1989 Cardoen received his government's permission to sell Ethiopia up to 1,658 of the devices, at $7,000 apiece; the bombs have reportedly...
...Ethiopian deal was arranged, Cardoen says, through "third parties," whom he does not name but who have been identified by one of his employees as Israelis. Rumors have been circulating for months in Washington and the Middle East that Israel provided cluster bombs and other military aid to Mengistu in exchange for exit visas for Ethiopian Jews. Jerusalem, however, vehemently denies any involvement in Cardoen's Ethiopian deal...
...alarmed his country's neighbors. He admits that he is experimenting with fuel-air explosive bombs, which release and then detonate a vapor cloud of fuel. The F.A.E. has been called the "poor man's atom bomb" because of the powerful explosion it generates. After it became known that Cardoen had helped arrange an F.A.E. test in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile three months ago, protesters in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina charged that Chile's production of such a terrifying weapon could set off a regional arms race...
...F.A.E. controversy raised new calls by critics in Chile for a government crackdown on Cardoen's operations. The Defense Ministry has stopped the sale of weaponry to Ethiopia but has taken no other action. "Our arms-control law is designed to cover domestic weapons use," says Defense Minister Patricio Rojas. "It doesn't cover Chilean arms exports." The fact is that Cardoen and the post-Pinochet government are quite comfortable with each other. Cardoen contributed $1 million to President Patricio Aylwin's election campaign last year and large sums to several important congressional candidates...
Whatever the criticism, Cardoen takes a hard-nosed view of his business dealings. "I don't know of any good weapons," he once told an interviewer. "The weapons shouldn't exist. The problem is the human beings who use them...