Word: gaydamak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...kickbacks and organizing huge arms commissions from the Angolan government during the mid-1990s. In the dock were such big names as Charles Pasqua, a former French Interior Minister; Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late French President François Mitterrand; and Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkadi Gaydamak, who is currently a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem. The group is charged with having supplied almost $800 million worth of arms to Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos, including 12 helicopters, 6 naval vessels, 150,000 shells and 170,000 land mines...
...controversial past, however, has not prevented Gaydamak from establishing high-level business and political contacts inside Israel and endearing himself to the Israeli public. Where the government stumbled, he acted and now looks like a champion of the people compared to the current leaders. Gaydamak may or may not assume a political role or rank, but, largely thanks to an unpopular prime minister and those around him, he might just determine who gets to run Israel...
...Looming over it all, however, is Arkady Gaydamak and his recently established Social Justice organization. Gaydamak is neither a politician nor military man. He is a 54-year-old emigre who started his career running a translation company in France and made his fortune in the wreckage of the Soviet empire. He says Social Justice is not a political party. Rather, it was founded "to form a common ground for the non-privileged minorities who are the majority, for the people who were always kept out of power, who have no access to the new wealth, who have no protection...
...Gaydamak also likes to spread his political affiliations around. Though he has said in the past that he would support Netanyahu for the Prime Minister's post, Gaydamak nonetheless promotes talks with the Palestinians sooner rather than later (something Netanyahu does not support) and says Israel should be doing more to improve the quality of life for people in the West Bank and Gaza. While he insists he's not trying to be a kingmaker, he has put himself into a position to do just that. And though he says he has no political ambitions of his own, he adds...
...There is, of course, skepticism about his motives, intimation that he is trying to buy popularity. "Not even Moses managed to escape this kind of criticism," he says. Nevertheless, Gaydamak's resume is hardly that of a saint. In 2000, France issued a warrant for Gaydamak's arrest, charging that he had contravened French law by engineering a deal that traded weapons, in exchange for oil, to an Angolan government then fighting a brutal civil war. (A year earlier, he had received a suspended sentence for tax evasion.) Gaydamak fled France to avoid arrest - even though he is a member...