Financial Administrator of Abalone Investments and other Gaydamak Entities
Joelle Mamane, now in her late 50s, is an accountant by profession who worked for the Discount Bank in Luxembourg during the 1980s and early 1990s, where she rose to the position of Deputy CEO. Thereafter, she set up an independent financial advisory service specialising in offshore financing vehicles—skills she allegedly used to create a vast array of offshore companies intended to disguise Gaydamak’s real assets.
She was the critical financial engineer, adviser, and business alter ego for Gaydamak. It was she, sources say, who had originally incorporated Abalone for Gaydamak and had served as its managing director, and frequently as signatory.
Mamane is currently active in the Jewish philanthropic sector.
A former senior official in Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, Avi Dagan also appears in another Angola-related Gaydamak scandal, involving not oil but diamonds. In that matter, Gaydamak ended up suing another Israeli business associate, Lev Leviev, for about $1 billion in a British court, seeking (unsuccessfully) to enforce an alleged agreement with Leviev to share with Gaydamak one half of Leviev’s interest in the Angolan diamond parastatal, ASCORP S.a.r.l. Dagan, who tended to refer to Gaydamak in emails as the “father,” testified in support of Gaydamak in that case, but was found by the court to be “not a straightforward witness,” who provided testimony that “could not be relied upon” and was, in part, “impossible to believe.”