Gaydamak indicted in France for arms trafficking

[Scurrilous]

Russian-Israeli billionaire to stand trial in France for allegedly selling heavy weaponry to Angolan president during country's 27-year civil war. Prosecutors claim that the arms sales totaled nearly $791 million

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3382700,00.html

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"French prosecutors have decided to indict Russian-Israeli business mogul Arcadi Gaydamak for illegal arms trafficking to Angola and various other corruption charges.

Prosecutors suspect Gaydamak and French businessman Pierre Falcone of selling heavy weaponry to Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos during Angola's 27-year civil war. Prosecutors allege that the arms sales, carried out from 1993 to 2000 without clearance from the French government, totaled nearly $791 million.

Gaydamak, along with 41 other suspects are set to stand trial for suspected roles in illegal arms sales to Angola during the war. If he is convicted, the Israeli billionaire may face a long jail sentence.

According to the indictment, the weaponry sales included tanks, helicopters, six warships, land mines and large amounts of ammunition.

The group targeted by prosecutors includes Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of late French President Francois Mitterrand, who served as counselor on African affairs from 1986-92 under his father, and former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua."



Israel's Kingmaker in the Wings (Thursday, Mar. 22, 2007)

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"Could the most important player in Israeli politics be a Russian billionaire who owns two sports teams, has four passports (Israeli, French, Canadian, and Angolan) and is wanted in France on charges of illegal arms dealing? Arkady Gaydamak, with his wealth and ambition, may be in the position of kingmaker as Israel goes through a profound leadership crisis. Already, Gaydamak, according to one recent poll, is the most trusted public figure in the country.

The country's ire is focused on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who last week publicly acknowledged that he is "an unpopular Prime Minister" — conceding the truth of opinion polls that give him the lowest approval ratings of any Prime Minister in the nation's history. He bears the onus of the living in the shadow of Ariel Sharon, of failing to snatch victory in last year's Lebanon war — a conflict that saw Hizballah Katyushas raining down on Israeli territory — of leading the nation as the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran rises to the east and of presiding over a government plagued by corruption, financial, ethical and criminal scandals. It is a time of "complete disillusionment, an implosion of faith in the country's leaders," says Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War and a senior fellow at Jerusalem's Shalem Center, an academic research organization.

Olmert has vowed to press on, but contenders for his chair are already positioning themselves for a run at the top spot. Rivals in his own Kadima party include Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Housing Minister Meir Sheetrit. A former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, and a former head of the Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, who now serves in the Knesset, are angling to take the top spot in the Labor Party from Amir Peretz, Olmert's coalition partner and his disastrous and unpopular choice as defense minister. And at the head of the line is Likud Party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, another former Prime Minister and an outspoken critic of this government and its readiness to counter the Iranian threat.

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, who are not patronized by the establishment." He styles himself a nagid or gvir, a traditional Jewish philanthropist-leader who uses his wealth for the public good. During the Lebanon War, when the government was slow to shelter hundreds of thousands of Israelis who fled the Katyusha fire in the north, Gaydamak erected a tent city that housed thousands of families. Last fall, when the town Sderot was facing regular Qassam rocket fire from Gaza, Gaydamak paid to bus thousands of residents down south to stay in high-end hotels."

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