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Avigdor Lieberman has an illegal business relationship with Austrian businessman Martin Schlaff

The police have been conducting a lengthy inquiry into suspicions that Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman has an illegal business relationship with Austrian businessman Martin Schlaff, who has substantial business interests in Israel.

An Austrian court recently approved an Israeli request to conduct its investigation in Austria, allowing investigators to take depositions from various people and to examine bank accounts suspected of being connected to the affair. The court decision followed a lower court ruling denying the Israeli request.

Haaretz has learned that several years ago, during a special session of an Austrian parliamentary committee investigating that country's intelligence services, information came up regarding business connections between Martin Schlaff, the Austrian businessman who is believed to own 50% of the Jericho casino, and Lieberman, and how money was transferred to the political party Lieberman established, Yisrael Beitenu.

As in the Sharon-Cyril Kern affair, the Lieberman case also began in the wake of a State Comptroller's report on party financing. The report, which came out in 2000, was conducted mostly because of its examination of non-profit organizations that funneled funding to former premier Ehud Barak's election campaign in 1999. But the public interest in the millions that went to the Barak campaign distracted attention from some other scandals that appeared in the report, even though, as in the case of the Barak campaign contributions, the attorney general ordered police inquiries.

The comptroller said that Israel Beitenu received a million dollar credit line from a bank in Israel, using a bank guarantee from Vienna for the credit line. The Viennese bank, said the report, was given a personal guarantee of the million dollar guarantee by a foreign resident.

But Lieberman also refused to name the businessman who backed the million dollar credit line and only said it was a "personal friend" from Austria.
Lieberman said that he met the "friend" after leaving the Prime Minister's Office (where he had been the bureau chief for former premier Benjamin Netanyahu) and went into business in eastern Europe. He emphasized that at the time he had no business ties with the Austrian, "who did not want his name published."

A few months later, close to the Camp David summit of 2000, Lieberman, then an opposition MK from the far right, met in London with Mohammed Rashid, Yasser Arafat's financier, who was known for his business relations with Schlaff as a partner in the Jericho casino.

A few months later, Rashid and Schlaff met in Vienna with Dov Weisglass, who represents Schlaff's interests in the Middle East, Omri Sharon and Eitan Bentsur, a former director general of the foreign ministry. Then-prime minister Barak charged that Lieberman urged the Palestinians not to strike a deal with the Labor-Meretz government but to wait for a right wing government with which they could get a better deal. Lieberman refused then to comment on the connection between the meeting in London and the one in Vienna.

Категория: Avigdor Lieberman | Добавил: usa (22.02.2007)
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