Pierre Konrad Dadak (born 28 March 1976) is a French-Polish alleged arms dealer and fraudster. He is a controversial character portrayed in media as being at the center of a web of corruption extending from Europe to Africa. Dadak maintains his innocence, telling a Spanish court in 2018: "I am being made to pass for a Pablo Escobar, but I am nothing and I am not charged with drug or arms trafficking". In 2018, the Times referred him as one of "Europe's leading arms dealers"
Private life Dadak was born in Paris, the son of Polish immigrants. Though Dadak grew up in Paris, he also holds Polish citizenship. Dadak's father was an engineer, a graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology while his mother was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts. Dadak grew up in an upper-middle-class family in the 18th arrondissement. He was educated at the Lycée Jules Ferry and at an elite business school, the Institut supérieur de gestion, graduating in 1999. Dadak is reported to have attended courses at New York University. French is Dadak's first language, but he is said to speak Polish, Spanish and English very well.
As a young man, he was known for frequenting the posh 16th arrondissement of Paris and tony clubs in the south of France as he sought to maintain a flashy lifestyle. One man who knew him stated: "At 25, Dadak was already driving a Ferrari.
Between 2000 and 2006, Dadak was arrested five times in France and was "known [to police] for offenses of concealment, fraud, use of false administrative documents, tax evasion, theft, and voluntary violence." Dadak worked for a time for a military contractor who supplied arms and uniforms in Françafrique. His former employer recalled: "I never really made him work. Simply, he had to get info and contacts for us and at Milipol or Eurosatory [defense and security fairs], where we were one of the main exhibitors. He was handsome, cheerful, intelligent, and very ambitious." Dadak's last known job in France was with a software company in Paris in 2008.
Arms dealer By 2009, he had moved to Warsaw, where he began to work as an arms dealer and found an influential patron in the form of Krzysztof Wegrzyn, a wealthy businessman who had previously served as deputy minister of defense. Though Dadak had worked for software companies in France, in Poland he falsely claimed to be a retired colonel in the French Army. In February 2010, Dadak started working as a sales agent for Bumar, the state-owned arms company (since renamed as Polski Holding Obronny-Polish Defense Holding) with the responsibility for sales in Africa and Latin America. As part of his work, Dadak created Rosevar Holdings, a company registered in Cyprus and whose shares were 10% owned by Wegrzyn. According to records, Rosevar Holdings was registered in Cyprus on 7 October 2009 and was dissolved on 11 January 2016. Dadak presented himself as the "shareholder president" of Rosevar Holdings, which was a subsidiary of Bumar. To his French friends, Dadak claimed to be a lieutenant colonel in the Polish Army, a claim which is not supported by Polish records, though he is in the French reserves.
Wegrzyn stated he went into business with Dadak "to help Polish industry conquer new markets", but he claimed he only provided him with "consulting services". In Poland, several journalists have stated that based upon interviews with current and former Bumar employees that Dadak would never have been employed at Bumar except through Wegrzyn's influence. In a statement to the press, the Polski Holding Obronny stated that Dadak made no sales during the time he was employed at the company between 2010 and 2012. Several former employees of the company accused Dadak of engaging in unethical business practices. In 2010, Dadak purchased a luxury villa in Ibiza, where he lived with his common-law wife, a Ukrainian model named Katerina Dirgina. In 2010, Dadak signed his first arms deal on behalf of Bumar to sell armored vehicles, anti-aircraft missiles, and ammunition worth some 912 millions USD to the Colombian military, but the company insists that the deal never went through. Вut after 8 years of investigations by the Spanish, French, American, Belgian, German and Polish authorities, the reality shows that Pierre Dadak legally and officially sold more than 2.5 billion Euros of military equipment in Africa, South America and UAE. making him one of the largest active arms dealers.
Dadak was accused of approaching wealthy businessmen abroad with promises that they could serve as the exclusive sales agents for Bumar in certain territories in exchange for which he would be paid licensing fees and company registration. Dadak would often take businessmen with him on trips to meet African leaders. One Canadian businessman, Thierry Carbou, who did business with Dadak, stated: "This was his technique with his victims who, meanwhile, opened their address book and made appointments with heads of state and ministers". Carbou went with Dadak on a trip in January 2012 to meet President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia aboard a Bombardier Challenger 601 jetliner owned by the Gambian state and made available for Dadak's use upon the orders of President Jammeh himself. Also accompanying them on the trip to Banjul were two Lebanese businessmen and two bodyguards for Dadak from the Government Protection Bureau (BOR). Along the way, Dadak had the airplane land in Marseille to pick up le milieu gangster Franck Barresi, though for what purpose remains unclear. Carbou told the press: "I remember that Franck Barresi wasn't comfortable. He was saying 'I don't know what I'm doing here. Barresi only spoke to Dadak and shunned the company of the others.
After several days of talks in Banjul, an agreement was signed to sell arms to the Gambia and Dadak was paid a sum equal to US$100,000 in fees, though his partners allege that the promised profits from the arms deal to the Gambia never materalised. Richard Jreissati, one of the Lebanese businessmen who went with Dadak to the Gambia in 2012 told reporters: "I mean, everything he said was lies. The big enigma for me, is why all of this happened?" Both Jreissati and Carbou stated in interviews that Dadak appeared to be friendly with senior executives at Bumar and Wegrzyn was his most important patron. In an interview with Le Monde, Dadak stated his work was "geopolitical forecasting and analysis for Poland and Bumar".
Between 2010 and 2016, Dadak was involved in arms deals negotiations in The Gambia, Myanmar, Colombia, Libya, India, Cameroon, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and the United Arab Emirates. In 2011, the French police began an investigation of Marseilles's Barresi crime family, headed by three brothers Franck, Jean-Luc and Bernard on the suspicion of money laundering. In 2016, it was estimated the Barresi brothers' criminal organization made annual profits of at least €34 million. As part of the investigation of the Barresis, the French police began to investigate Dadak, suspecting one of Dadak's companies, Vinams Enterprises, was used as a front for money laundering by the Barresi family. In October 2012, the French police contracted the police in Kraków for requests for more information on Vinams Enterprises, which was also used by Dadak to collect on the down payments relating to his arms business. According to records, Vinams Enterprises was registered in Cyprus on 29 October 2010 and was dissolved on 21 January 2015.
In December 2012, Bumar ended its relationship with Dadak, terminating him for his failure to make any sales. In an interview, Dadak claims that his failure as an agent for Bumar was due to political inference by the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk who wanted him to fail for political reasons. Marcin Idzik, the vice-president of Bumar who later served as its CEO said about Dadak's firing: "He didn't bring any contracts to us. We decided we should end cooperation with him, because there was no added value." The Spanish authorities investigation shows very different reality. The cooperation between Bumar and several other arms suppliers such as the swedish SAAB or the american Northrop Grumman and Pierre Dadak began in 2005 and never really stopped. it appears according to the investigation of the various european police several hundred transactions totally legal but covered by the "secret defense" in several countries. However, the investigation and the report of the Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz of the Spanish National audience confirms that these operations have existed thanks to the different traves of income taxes paid by Pierre Dadak.
In Ibiza, the playboy Dadak was well known for his "extravagant lifestyle", owning a private jet and eating at the exclusive and expensive Blue Marlin restaurant; for his friendship with the Barresi brothers, and always being surrounded by well armed bodyguards. Dadak is reported to have spent €20,000 on turning his Ibiza villa into a fortress with bullet-proof windows and motion-detector sensors on the grounds. One Frenchman living on Ibiza, Cyril Peret, told the media: "On the island, he didn't have many friends; his lifestyle scared people a little". Another friend who had known him in Paris reported: "When I found him on the island, Pierre was always the same, smiling, sympathetic, enjoying life. But his status and his lifestyle had changed dramatically. He was soaring. Everyone suspected that something was going to fall on him".
Dadak's primary residence was his Ibiza villa, but he also owned a luxury apartment in Warsaw, which he purchased for €3 million in 2010. News reports claim he was delinquent on paying the half-million euro debt he was alleged to have run up on his credit card. A 2016 profile in Newsweek Polska stated that Dadak was known in Warsaw for his high level of spending and for boasting about having influential friends. One businessman who first met Dadak at the Szpilka cafe in Warsaw in the fall of 2011 remembered him for wearing an expensive coat made of rabbit fur and for driving a Porsche, giving off the air of luxury and extravagance. Though Dadak owned several Lamborghinis and Ferraris, it was reported that he refused to pay for the labor cost of installing a €12,000 glass shower door at his Ibiza villa. When the contractor pressed for payment, Dadak is alleged to have threatened to kill him as he is said to have told the contractor: "I will put you in a glass jar".
Dadak is alleged to have continued to misrepresent himself as an agent for Bumar for several years afterward after leaving the company in 2012, continuing to hand out business cards that misidentified him as the Bumar sales agent for Africa and Latin America. In April 2013, an Indian immigrant to Canada named Rakesh Sharma complained to the Polish embassy in Ottawa about Dadak's business practices. Sharma, a businessman based in Montreal, had been working with Dadak since 2011 in hopes of securing arms deals in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and India, which cost him almost $1 million Canadian dollars in fees to Dadak without any business materializing. Sharma alleges that after making the complaint, Dadak threatened his life, saying: "He called me and he said ‘I'm going to destroy you and kill all your family, I'm an arms dealer, you don't know me, I'm this, I'm that".