Sam Vaknin, Always in Spots of Trouble

Vaknin constantly appears in countries where there is a crisis. After he appears, there is always some big change in the politics of those countries.

In 1990, Sam Vaknin was arrested and interrogated several times by the new securities fraud squad of the Israeli police. He was suspected of (and, in 1995, convicted of) securities fraud in a strange affair involving the purchase of a state-owned bank, Agriculture Bank. 

His brokerage house, Mikbats Tesuah, was closed and he paid millions to banks, the tax authorities, and individuals he owed money to, including some very dangerous crime personalities. He went to live with his new wife, Nomi, who was just out of the Israeli army, in Ramat-Gan, not far from the Diamond Exchange and the Elite chocolate factory (Lean st. 24).

Yet, in 1991, Vaknin was back. By 1994, he had enough money to buy big part of the state-owned IT company (Malmata”m) and a HVAC factory, Omega as well as temp agency employing 8000 people.

In 1991, together with an also mysterious Israeli businessman, Gideon Sandel, he had a meeting with representatives of a giant Yugoslav company, MKS (Metalurski Kombinat Smederovo). The meeting was very secret in an office in the building of the gigantic Israeli holding company, Klal. 

No one knows what was discussed there, but months later Vaknin travelled to Serbia (without any problem even though he has been arrested!). There he met with Dusko Matkovic, then general manager of MKS and, later, Minister of Industry in the Milosevic regime. 

In this trip, Vaknin met all the big economic players of Serbia and political figures like the mayor of Belgrade and, after that, Milosevic himself. It was agreed that Vaknin will help Serbia break the international sanctions that were then beginning to be imposed on it.

Over the next 4 years, Vaknin engineered fake transactions, created shell companies, and moved 4 billion (!) USD from Serbia to many accounts in banks in Israel, Cyprus, and Lebanon. This money was used by Milosevic to buy fuel, weapons, raw materials, and finished industrial products and to pay to his loyalists. Without this money, the regime would have collapsed. 

Vaknin operated in Novi Sad, from the offices of Sand-Trade, a trading company owned by an ex Israeli parachutist, Gideon Sandel. Sandel fell from a mountain in Macedonia and died in 2012 in very suspicious circumstances. 

In 1995 Vaknin returned to Israel to be in prison! After 11 months, he was released on good behavior (!) and moved immediately to live in Macedonia, again working with Gideon Sandel and with Tose Kocevski, a Macedonian-Russian businessman, who owned VessoLink and Pikon, two paging companies. 

For 2 years (1998-9) Vaknin lived with his girlfriend (later, wife) LidijaRangelovska, in Prague and in Moscow in the most prestigious area: Patriki. He was in Moscow during the economic crisis of 1998 that almost destroyed Russia’s economy. Ostensibly, he worked as advisor to a foreign-owned communication company, Vessolink. While there, he collaborated with major financial houses (most of them Western owned), banks, and prominent figures which later featured - and still feature - in the highest echelons various Putin administrations and as eminences grise. 

But collaborated doing what? No one has a clear answer. 

He and his wife were kidnapped for ransom once by rogue KGB agents, when they got separated from his bodyguards. That is all we were able to find out. Two years of activity there and not a trace left behind. All amidst a mega bond crisis, carefully orchestrated by mysterious forces.

Vaknin also wrote a few articles for Pravda, Izvestiya and other papers explaining why the crisis was good for Russia. He is back in Russia now. Interesting times ahead?

While in Macedonia 1996-8, Vaknin acted publicly against the socialist government. He started as an advisor to the Privatization Agency and the Stock Exchange of Macedonia but then became a shadow consultant to the rightwing party, the VMRO-DPMNE. 

Vaknin selected a young, junior banker, Nikola Gruevski, and published with him in the print media a long series of dialogs about economic issues. These were later made into a book that Gruevski was giving copies of to his guests when he became Minister of Finance.

The dialogs with Vaknin made Gruevski very famous. In 1998, the VMRO-DPMNE won the elections. Gruevski became Minister without Portfolio and then Minister of Trade. Vaknin returned from Prague to Macedonia to become economic advisor to the government. He convinced Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski to appoint Gruevski as Minister of Finance.

Vaknin told people that he will make Gruevski into Macedonia’s Prime Minister. Everyone laughed. Until in 2006 this exactly happened. Many people in Macedonia consider Vaknin as the brain and éminence grise behind Gruevski’s coming to power.

To be continued.