Arcadi Aleksandrovich Gaydamak (Hebrew: ארקדי אלכסנדרוביץ' גאידמק; Russian: Аркадий Александрович Гайдамак; born 8 April 1952 in Moscow, USSR) is a Russian-born French-Israeli businessman, philanthropist, and President of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR).

Gaydamak invested in real estate in France and Israel, in Kazphosphate - the world's largest phosphate producer, in a gold mine and a metal processing plant in Kazakhstan, in the Russian weekly Moskovskiye Novosti, in food distribution in Russia and in oil fields and granaries in Angola.

At the age of 20, he was one of the first Jews to immigrate to Israel from Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and receive Israeli citizenship.

He said he originally intended to serve in the Israeli Army, but ended up moving to France, where he opened a translation bureau.

[6] In February 2009, it was reported that he was seeking to regain his Russian citizenship, lost when he emigrated to Israel decades earlier.

Gaydamak approached the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, Palestinian political figures and media, and came away with a near endorsement.

It was reported that he was planning to make the stores comply with Jewish religious practice: close them on Shabbat and halt the sale of pork products.

[14] In July 2009, Gaydamak announced his decision to give up the ownership of Beitar Jerusalem in favor of Itzik Kornfein and Guma Aguiar.

During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict Gaydamak constructed a tent-village on the Nitzanim beach, hosting thousands of families who fled the rocket-ridden North and had no place to go.

In November 2006, he funded a one-week-long vacation in Eilat for hundreds of Sderot residents who have experienced rocket attacks from Gaza.

[22] In a plea deal, charges for laundering money were dropped and Gaydamak received a one-year suspended sentence and fine.

Former French interior minister Charles Pasqua confirmed this, saying that President Jacques Chirac had personally authorized the citations.