Poju Zabludowicz

Poju" Zabludowicz (born 6 April 1953), owner of the Liechtenstein -registered Tamares investment group, is a Finnish Jewish businessman based in London .¹ The Sunday Times Rich List 2009 of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom ranked him 18th, with an estimated fortune of £1,500 million.² He is chairman of BICOM , the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, an organization which lobbies the UK government on behalf of Israel . In 2008-2009 he is reported to have given the pressure group £800,000, totaling more than $1.8 million in three years. According to a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, Zabludowicz is a member of the Jewish Leadership Council , and has contributed to David Cameron 's election campaign fund. According to the Rich List , Zabludowicz owns 40% of central Las Vegas , including six casinos . He has since sold one of those casinos and two are non-operational, leaving him with three relatively small casinos. His father Shlomo built the family business around Soltam , an Israeli defence contractor . Most of the defence interests were offloaded as the family diversified into property and hotels. He also holds Pocal Industries, headquartered in Scranton, Pa (USA), with Randy McClane as the Operations Manager, and a branch located in Gouldsboro, Pa (USA), with Paul Reese as the Operations Manager, which are actively building munitions, with over 100 employees. Zabludowicz has further business interests in the Middle East, and is part owner of a shopping mall in a West Bank settlement . . Zabludowicz was born in Helsinki and raised in Tampere , where he attended Svenska Samskolan i Tammerfors, the Swedish-speaking school in the city. He later studied economics and social sciences at Tel Aviv University . He is married to British-born Anita Zabludowicz. He speaks fluent Finnish , Swedish , English , German , Hebrew and Yiddish . He and his wife exhibit their private art collection at 176 , a gallery in a former 19th-century Methodist chapel in Chalk Farm , north London. Plans to build an art museum in downtown Las Vegas have been put on hold. One sculpture in the collection, a miniature statue of Jesus with an erection , surrounded by 50 other sculptures also with erections, has been considered "grotesquely offensive" by some Christians, one of whom has said she will bring a private prosecution against the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead , which has exhibited the statue. Mr and Mrs Zabludowicz appear in ArtReview' s Power 100 lists for 2006, 2007 and 2008, which assess those most powerful in the art world. They were guests at Madonna 's 51st birthday celebrations.³