Word: cardoen
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...brochures apparently made the sale for him. Sometime later, Cardoen was contacted by Iraqi army officers, who were interested in one of the weapons listed in his sales kit: the cluster bomb, a destructive antipersonnel device that scatters tiny bomblets over a wide area. The weapon was ideal for Iraq's relatively unskilled air force, especially after Iran began attacking Iraqi positions with human waves of fanatical young fighters...
Since the early 1980s, Cardoen has sold Iraq thousands of cluster bombs and other explosives, as well as such weapons-related technology as computer- operated metal lathes. Iraq in turn has helped make Cardoen, 48, one of the richest men in Chile; his firm, Cardoen Industries, has grossed $400 million from the cluster bombs alone. No wonder that until recently, Cardoen kept President Saddam Hussein's portrait hanging in a place of honor in his Santiago factory...
...Cardoen makes no apologies for helping arm Iraqi soldiers, even though the cluster-bomb factory he built on the outskirts of Baghdad is no doubt spitting out weapons that might be used against the multinational alliance arrayed against Saddam in the Persian Gulf. Cardoen rationalizes his position by explaining that he began selling Saddam arms "when Iraq was considered a friend of the West who was fighting the Ayatullah ((Khomeini...
Because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Cardoen stands to lose millions. Since Chile is honoring the embargo against Baghdad, he was forced to cut off his lucrative contracts, the latest of which was for a $60 million plant in Iraq designed to produce fuses for bombs, artillery shells and rockets. The 31 Cardoen engineers who were working on the project have returned to Chile; it is not clear when, if ever, Cardoen will be paid. Cardoen also suffered a blow when U.S. officials refused to certify as airworthy his military adaptation of the Bell 206 helicopter, a move...
...knows the shrewd and innovative Chilean entrepreneur, however, expects the loss of the Iraqi account to set him back for long. With a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Utah, Cardoen first worked in the U.S. and Chile as a mining engineer. He founded the company that bears his name in 1977, after Chile's former President, General Augusto Pinochet, whose repressive government was the object of an international arms-sales boycott, asked local companies to fill the gap. Though arms manufacture has been Cardoen's main business ever since, he also deals in industrial explosives, real estate...