Who is the mysterious Arms Dealer?

During the Arms Deal and Bravo update in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, new guns were added to the game. The idea, according to Valve, is that the update "lets you experience all the illicit thrills of black market weapons trafficking without any of the hanging around in darkened warehouses getting knifed to death." Valve has made artwork for both of these updates, and there is a strange man in both of them.

In Valve's artwork for the Arms Deal update, the man is visible sitting on a case of weapons. In Valve's artwork for the Bravo update, the man is visible standing up.

Who is this mysterious figure? Is he the leader of the Counter-Terrorists in CSGO? Or more likely, he supplies weapons to the Terrorists in CSGO? Some people say that he is the Gman from Half-Life. Or is he simply part of the artwork? I am curious to know the answer.

Solution 1:

It is simply a little bit of backstory to accompany the skin changes, nothing more than that.

If you wish to read more, look in to the text in the mission journals, for a man named Booth, there is quite a bit of talk about him in there.