Arkady Gaydamak, the colourful Israeli tycoon convicted by a French court last month of smuggling arms to Angola, blasted the case as "pure politics" in an interview published Wednesday.
Gaydamak, born in Moscow, professed his innocence to the Russian daily Vedomosti, three weeks after he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to six years in jail for organising arms sales to Angola during its 1990s civil war.
"I personally never took part in the deliveries of military equipment," said Gaydamak, a flamboyant businessmen whose business interests have ranged from Angolan oil exports to Russian media outlets to Israeli sports teams.
"This case is pure politics," he said, referring to the "Angolagate" scandal which also led to convictions of a former French interior minister and Jean-Christophe Mitterand, a son of the late French president.
But Gaydamak, who spent decades in France and holds French citizenship, said he would fight to clear his name and said he hoped to return to Paris.
"In my soul, I am a Parisian…. This is my country and I spent all my adult life there. If this case were behind me, I would go there today, of course," Gaydamak said.
The tycoon told Vedomosti he was currently in Russia and was planning to remain there, after being indicted in Israel for money laundering and unsuccessfully running for mayor of Jerusalem last year.
Gaydamak was born in the Soviet Union in 1952 and emigrated to Israel in 1972. He left after six months for France, but moved back to the Jewish state again in 2000 after the French authorities started investigating Angolagate.
The tycoon said in the interview that he has French, Angolan, Israeli and Canadian citizenship and there was "nothing interfering" with him receiving a Russian passport too.
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