9

The Operators

2008-2009 … Oz and Berkman expand in Israel … Ari Ben- Menashe and the Zimbabwean gambit … Swimming with sharks

“Money is not an issue,” Le Roux had told Moran Oz and Alon Berkman on their second trip to Manila in 2008. They had now risen from employees to de facto supervisors, in charge of all aspects of the Israeli operation. As soon as they re- turned from the Philippines, they began building out the compa- ny’s call center operations in Tel Aviv. Le Roux sent an advance man, a Zimbabwean named Robert McGowan, to Israel to regis- ter a new company called Customer Service Worldwide, or CSWW. McGowan stayed in a hotel for a few days while Oz drove him to lawyers and banks to sign paperwork, then left and never returned. CSWW officially opened in 2009, housed in an eleven-floor tower not far from the government center of Tel Aviv. The Israeli na- tional government’s Money Laundering and Terror Financing Pro- hibition Authority was located on another floor of the same building. Now that Le Roux was shifting some of his call center operations to Israel, CSWW would handle customer service in Tel Aviv, while another new company would manage the accounting