Sam Vaknin, From Black Ops to Black Africa

Vaknin’s military service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is another enigma. His military dossier shows that in 1979 he served as a private first class in Golani, an infantry unit. He was a witness for the prosecution in a war crimes trial after he documented atrocities committed by his Golani superiors and soldiers in the West Bank town of Halhul.

But then he went to study computer programming and to be a parachuted medic. After that, he became a kitchen hand (!) in Bik’at Ha’yareakh (“Moon Valley”), Israel’s remotest air base not far from Eilat, the Red Sea resort. Three months among pots and pans and he is in the Air Force in Sde Dov (AFB 15) in the center of Tel-Aviv. There, he teaches physics and mathematics to air force pilots and mechanics. He also manages the Air Force library in the base.

Yet, our research discovered that Vaknin was secretly working with all the intelligence arms of the IDF. He was nominally under the command of Brigadier General Zusia Kniager (“Zizi”). He was involved in two projects: “mind reading” (studying how to read and interpret brain electricity, possibly for pilot helmets) and predicting geopolitical and military events using computer models and simulations based on mathematics.

And he was starting to become very famous in the media: television, newspapers. For one whole decade, Vaknin was fully covered by all the media in Israel just for being a “genius” and with no real achievements (except his IQ and academic career which will be discussed in future).

And, contrary to all army regulations, he was allowed to travel outside Israel freely to ... gamble in casinos! This is really getting very strange, even surrealistic because these trips were with known top-level mafia figures in Israel. More about these mysterious gambling trips in one of our next exposes.

All his life Vaknin has one official biography and one true resume, a visible, public side and a dark, hidden part. It is like he is not one person but many, with multiple personalities.

Consider his involvement in Africa.

First time Vaknin visited this continent in 1983. He was already a senior member of the business empire of the Jewish Sudanese multi-billionaire, Nessim Gaon. Gaon sent him to Nigeria to start the population census project – the biggest of its kind in the world. Vaknin was supposed to design the specifications of the census: hardware, software mainly. 

Later, he travelled to Nigeria with the project manager, Mayer Landau, but the first few times he was on his own or with Gaon. He worked closely with the General Manager of the Ministry of Interior of Nigeria and with a computer scientist, Abimbola Salako. Corruption must have been a big part of what he did. Nothing happens in Nigeria without it.

Then, after an affair when Vaknin was arrested in Geneva for stealing secret documents of Gaon and leaking them to the Swiss press (he didn’t, the judge cleared him) – he went to Paris (to manage Gaon’s office there!) and then to Israel. He made a trade company with the top names and idols of the Israeli secret services and military. For example: one of his partners was Mordehai (“Motti”) Hod, the legendary commander of the Israeli Air Force in the Six Days War. 

With a few of these partners, he moved to London where he leased a house with five floors not far from Marble Arch (34 Connaught Square, where Tony Blair resides today). He moved there with his new girlfriend, Sigal Bareket, a used bookstore owner from Tel-Aviv. It is impossible to read the list of his partners without being shocked. He was only 24! Here they are:

Elkana Gali (Mossad, Israel Aircraft Industries – IAI); Al Schwimmer (IAI); Marcus Katz (one of the world’s biggest weapons dealer); Ya’akov Nimrodi (one of the richest men in Israel, ex-intelligence); Ephraim Illin (owner of car factory, art collector); Motti Hod: Gershon (“Gigi”) Peres, brother of Shimon Peres, most important politician of Israel, was also involved as was Alexander Haig, a senior American military leader and politician.

Amazingly, these were exactly the same group of people who were responsible for the Iran-Contra affair in the same years that Vaknin was with them all in London: 1985-7. Could this be a coincidence? Hard to believe so! The Iran-Contra affair affair almost destroyed Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States and his administration!

From London, Vaknin started to operate in Sierra Leone. He cooperated with Shel Silverstein and Jack Peters, two American businessmen that some say were actually senior CIA figures. They made contact with the owner of a bus service (“Liat”) and diamond concessions in Sierra Leone and ex advisor to Israel’s Prime Minister, Golda Meir. His name was Shabtai Kalmanovich.

The idea was to bribe the President of Sierra Leone, General Momoh, to give him a private jet and to get from him an island where they could bury nuclear and chemical waste materials from Germany and other west Europe countries. Vaknin met Momoh to discuss the details of the deal and spent a lot of time with Kalmanovich in Africa and in Germany.

The deal collapsed when Kalmanovich was arrested and in a way kidnapped by the Mossad (in collaboration with British law authorities). He ended up in Israeli prison for being a senior KGB agent. Later, he returned to Russia and was assassinated there in his car.

All this time, Vaknin presented himself as a “financial engineer”, owner of IPE, an Isle of Man company set up by Bernard Garbacz, an accountant at Landau-Morley LLP. Ten years later, Garbacz  arranged the financing needed for Vaknin to buy the IT unit of the Israeli government in a corrupt privatization tender.

In 1987, Vaknin returned to Israel. He established a big brokerage house, “Mikbats Tesuah”. Again, he was operating in the light, but living in the shadows. 

To be continued.