He's the billionaire former prime minister who lives in a glass clad metallic mansion overlooking the Georgian capital which would make Scaramanga blush.
Meet Bidzina Ivanishvili, who when not trying to sway public opinion by appearing on a talk show he founded on his albino rapper son's TV channel, is still thought to be pulling the strings at the top of government in the former Soviet state.
The 59-year-old made the bulk of his estimated $5.2billion (£3.3billion) fortune as an oligarch amid the chaos of Russia in the 1990s after the breakup of the USSR.
The animal lover has promised to help the government relocate Tblisi zoo after last week's disastrous flood. It was almost entirely destroyed when a sudden surge of water swept through on June 13 and many of the animals escaped, while three employees were killed.
Ivanishvili said: 'I never liked the condition the Tbilisi Zoo was in. I even prepared a project in 2006-2007. I promised the government assistance with financing the zoo, to allow the animals a normal environment.
'If we capture an animal, we should treat it honorably. From my point of view, our zoo was not in the best condition in this respect.'
He began building his fortune by selling computers and importing telephones to Russia before moving on to metals, banking, hotels and drugstores before moving back to the country of his birth in 2003, with personal wealth that was then reputed to be half the size of Georgia's entire gross domestic product.
For years he was the invisible billionaire, Georgia's richest person by far but a man who rarely allowed himself to be photographed and almost never interviewed.
But that all changed in 2011 when Ivanishvili decided to run for prime minister, taking on his former friend and Western favourite Mikheil Saakashvili.
He said at the time, 'I did not have any choice, to be honest. It was a question of the motherland.
'They have killed democracy, got rid of the media, and do not brook dissent. It is a fully fledged authoritarian government, and the signs are there that it could become a dictatorship.'
Being popular with the people thanks to his philanthropy certainly helped his case. He reportedly paid thousands of cultural workers' salaries for a time, gave $10m a month to a number of charities and funded construction of Tbilisi's cathedral.
Ivanishvili lavished neighbours in his home village of Chorvila with houses, roads and cash in the style of a feudal lord, giving residents £80 a month and newlyweds £1,200 as a gift - in addition for paying for their ceremonies.
Saakashvili's government tried to thwart him, stripping him of his Georgian citizenship in an attempt to stop him running, seizing millions of dollars as part of a money-laundering investigation of his bank and introducing limits on corporate campaign financing aimed at preventing his companies from bankrolling candidates.
But Ivanishvili managed to win and was soon happily holding court with journalists and politicians at his striking £30million, 10,000 sq m house in the hills overlooking Tiblisi - where visitors would be greeted by an aide with the line, 'Welcome to the James Bond house'.
The complex, designed by Japanese architect Shin Takamatsu, houses two entire floors made of glass and has a helipad on the roof.
An adjoining glass tower covers an indoor swimming pool, adjacent to a large outdoor one, with a huge rotating silver ball above the water housing a banqueting hall.
Priceless sculptures by Henry Moore, Damien Hirst and others occupy the gardens, while copies from an art collection worth $1bn, including works by Picasso, adorn the walls.
Ivanishvili is a major collector and was the then anonymous bidder who paid $95.2million for Picasso's 'Dora Maar With Cat' painting at Sotheby's in 2006.
In addition to his passion for art, he is known for a love of exotic animals, keeping dozens of zebras, sharks, penguins flamingos and parrots at his vast summer retreat on Georgia's Black Sea coast.
Born into poverty, the father-of-four started out as a factory cleaner before making his fortune. Ivanishvili has three sons, two of whom are albino and one of whom, Bera, is a well-known rapper and bodybuilder with more than 50,000 followers on Instagram.
The 20-year-old, often referred to as the 'Georgian Dream', released a song of the same name in support of his father's election bid - not coincidentally as leader of the Georgian Dream party.
Ivanishvili ruled Georgia for little more than a year from October 2012 to November 2013, before stepping down claiming to have completed his work of reforming Georgia's political system.
He installed then 31-year-old interior minister and close ally Irakli Garibashvili as his successor and supposedly withdrew from politics.
But Ivanishvili continues to be a major force behind the scenes - and sometimes more openly.
He recently started a talk show 2030 - in honor of the year when Ivanishvili expects European-style democracy and wealth to hit Georgia - on his son's MTV-style TV channel GTV. He abandoned his initial idea to host it but makes regular appearances.
It is intended as a counterpoint to to the country’s most popular TV channel, Rustavi2, a station Ivanishvili terms a 'machine of lies' run by ex-President Saakashvili and his cohort.
Amid an alarming 30 per cent plunge in the value of Georgia's currency - the lari - against the dollar since December, Ivanishvili is backing a bill which would strip the country's central bank of its regulatory powers.
And he continues to pursue his old foe Saakashvili, now head of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko's advisory council.
Ukraine has rejected Georgia's request for the extradition of its former president, who is facing a criminal probe at home over alleged abuses of power during his time as premier between 2004 and 2013.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's office said in Wednesday's statement that Saakashvili could face political persecution in Georgia if he is extradited.
Saakashvili has dismissed the accusations against him as a political vendetta by Ivanishvili, accusing the man who made his fortune in Russia of serving Moscow's interests.
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