Gaydamak says he made all of his money on the Russian stock exchange, calling it the "most dynamic stock exchange in the world."

"I never did something wrong in my life," he said Monday.

Gaydamak has repeatedly slammed the police for what he says is political persecution, even taking out an ad in an Israeli paper attacking legal authorities.

In the meantime, he has gone from anonymous to omnipresent, giving radio and TV interviews in heavily accented English. When gay activists and ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed recently over a planned Jerusalem pride parade, Gaydamak showed up unexpectedly to try — unsuccessfully — to negotiate a deal.

He is in the final stages of purchasing a popular local radio station, 99 FM, that he says is, like the soccer club, not a profitable business enterprise but rather a worthwhile way to connect with Israelis.

This summer, when nearly 4,000 Hezbollah rockets pummeled northern Israel, Gaydamak funded the evacuation of thousands for an all-expenses-paid vacation at a hastily erected beach-side village in southern Israel until the fighting ended. The cost to him: $200,000 a day. After a Palestinian rocket killed a woman in Sderot, Gaydamak stepped in again, sending a fleet of buses to take residents to hotels in the resort town of Eilat.

This philanthropy has made some Israelis nervous.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a Sderot resident, said; "Any decision on an evacuation demands good judgment. I don't think Israel has to resort to abandoning (towns)."

Daniel Ben-Simon, a columnist for the daily Haaretz, said Gaydamak was taking advantage of the state's failure to take care of its citizens.

"Let no one in Israel be surprised that during elections, there will be masses who will want to reward him for his great generosity — whether as president, prime minister, or party chief," Ben-Simon wrote in Haaretz on Sunday.

But not everyone agrees. Tom Segev, a prominent historian and journalist, said Gaydamak, who belongs to no political party, was merely following in the footsteps of Jewish benefactors like Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a beloved figure in Israeli history for funding agricultural settlements in the Holy Land a century ago.

"What's wrong with the fact that he's giving the children in Sderot a vacation?" Segev said. "The government didn't do anything for them, so he did."