Raul Colombo (Civ4)/Final Frontier/Civilopedia

As the present-day Chairman of Astrotech Corporation, Raul Colombo was instrumental in the takeover of the company and Isaris as a whole. Numerous colonization-based business interests on Earth netted him an immense fortune in the early years of the race for the stars. He became privy to the existence of Astrotech through one of his deals when a number of highly expensive illicit items were sold to a mysterious buyer in one of the Colonies. Through investigation, records of the company and its secret, privileged status were discovered. Eager to exploit a ripe opportunity when he saw it, Colombo and some of his associates made the necessary backdoor arrangements to travel to Isaris and transfer into the corporation.
Over the course of several years, Colombo achieved the complete infiltration of Astrotech through threats, bribes and promises, and by 2295 Colombo was voted Chairman of the Board and acting operational officer. He redirected funding towards a more martial goal, and several military research projects were begun. It was known that PDE forces were extremely sparse, and for good reason as it was assumed there was no interstellar threat. Only weakly-armed Police Ships had been built by the PDE in any real numbers, and these were constructed only with the goal of addressing potential trade ship mutinies or other minor disturbances. Colombo diverted an immense sum of money to the creation of new weapons in hopes of carving out his own interstellar empire, one day striking a lightning blow to the Earth from which it could never recover. The seeming disappearance of the Earth caused a change in plans, but effectively only further invited Colombo to enact his unscrupulous machinations upon an unsuspecting universe.