Sam Vaknin, Mystery Man

Sam Vaknin, Mystery Man

My name is Patrick Martin Benoit (not real name). I am a private investigator in Geneva and Brussels and former journalist in Geneva. I met Vaknin in Geneva many years ago, in 1983.

At age 21 he was friends with the richest billionaires in the world: Shivdasani, Gaon, Taman, Raccah, Cornfeld. He had a private jet he allegedly bought from Adnan Khashoggi and later sold to Donald Trump (more about it in a later post). In Russia, in a public lecture recently, he boasted that the jet was "bigger than Trump’s". He went skiing in Gstad. He established a literary association in Geneva with someone like Peter Ustinov. I could not understand what was going on. Just 2 years before he was a very poor Israeli from a slum!

I started to be interested in Mr. Vaknin. I asked my people (now I have more than 20 workers) to begin to look into him, make a dossier.

Almost first thing they found was this leak from Wikileaks. It reminded me of what Brendan Howley wrote of Sam Vaknin in a review of his book he published in Blue Ear:

“Vaknin's considerable intellectual armory reminds me of that of the ex-MOSSAD people I met in Poland in the early 1990s, retired spooks now running trading houses: utterly realistic, Talmudically concise in their opinions, and damn relentless. “

Now my interest was roused. I made it my hobby to study this man. Over the last 18 months I and my team began to find amazing facts and impossible counterfacts in Vaknin’s official curriculum vitae. So many that I do not know where to start most efficiently.  So many that I decided to establish a blog and publish my findings and discoveries.

Take for example the most simple question:

The District Court of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa issued an order banning Vaknin’s exit from Israel. If he tried to leave the country, he was to be arrested at the airport instantly. This was related to a lawsuit 1288/90 (Bank Mizrakhi against Vaknin et al.).

Yet, Vaknin comes and goes as he wishes from and to Israel. He is living in Skopje, Macedonia now but before that he lived in Prague and Moscow in very prestigious and expensive addresses (in Moscow in Patriki). How can he do that?

Recently, Vaknin posted a zip file with many Hebrew language articles about him from the 1980s. We are translating it. But already it is clear that he is telling the truth about his connections with the Israeli intelligence community, especially the Mossad, very senior people like Elkana Gali and Rafi Eitan. But he was only 23 then! 

At the same time that he is working with the most senior people of the Mossad, he is good friends and business partners with Eli Ronen, restaurateur and top organized crime mob figure! And with Uri Geller, the famous psychic. 

We were completely confused.

Maybe the first clue is Vaknin’s family from his mother’s side. Her nee is Pardo. Like the family name of the ex head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo who is, like her, from the same city in Turkey, Istanbul. 

Vaknin’s younger sister is Sima Gil-Vaknin, another senior military and intelligence figure (former IDF Brigadier General Chief Censor and now Director General, Ministry of Strategic Affairs.)

Another brother of Vaknin, Avinoam, is senior intelligence officer in the Israeli Air Force.

This is not a usual family. Not at all. And Sam Vaknin is hiding more than he is saying about his true life.

For example: what was Vaknin doing in senior position with the Moonies (Unification Church)? He was head of the Israeli affiliate of the prestigious Professors World Peace Academy when he was only 25! Then he worked as head of the Israel desk for the Washington Times and then Senior Business Correspondent in United Press International (UPI). All these were properties of the Reverend Moon.

Or consider this amazing photo. Vaknin, an Israeli in his early twenties, meeting secretly with top Arab politicians and intellectuals in the middle of the worst Intifada by the Palestinians against Israel.

Vaknin’s intellectual work is very controversial. He is well known for his studies of narcissism, but he actually contributed to physics, economics, computer science, philosophy, political analyses, published short fiction in Hebrew and English and also poetry. 

We began to look at Vaknin like someone with 100 personalities, not one. There was more fog than light. Now he became from hobby to obsession and the more we discovered, the more this guy looked like a Hollywood movie waiting to happen. 

To be continued.