Israeli minster ‘under warning’
Controversial Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday endured more than seven hours of questioning by police in a long-standing probe over business dealings. Police say Avigdor Lieberman was interviewed “under warning” on suspicion of bribery, money-laundering and fraud. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said National Fraud Investigation Unit officers queried Lieberman “under warning” on suspicion of bribery, money laundering, fraud, and breach of trust. “Under warning” means that anything he disclosed in the interview may be used as evidence if he is charged. The allegations include receiving a bribe via his daughter Michal’s consulting firm. Lieberman denies the allegations and says they are motivated by politics. His daughter and lawyer also have been questioned by authorities. Police have questioned Lieberman several times throughout his political career. Since he was questioned about an alleged money laundering affair in April 2007, detectives have gathered thousands of possibly incriminating documents.
About 1,000 of these documents were confiscated from Lieberman’s attorney’s office. Some 2,500 additional ones were gathered by the investigation team in Cyprus. These detail the activities of various companies that constituted part of Lieberman and his colleagues’ laundering network. They include bank documents listing money transfers and several accounts allegedly opened by Lieberman’s associates. The detectives believe they have evidence tying Lieberman to the money transfers made to the Cyprus accounts.
Tel Aviv Magistrate Benny Sagi studied the evidence compiled by the police in January about the bank accounts attributed to Lieberman in January, concluding that “the inquiry has taken another most significant turn, which increases the suspicion.” Lieberman is not suspected of one-time transfers or of transferring low sums, “but with depositing considerable sums into those accounts, sometimes in millions of shekels,” Sagi said. “In some cases we’re dealing with orderly, regular monthly deposits”.
After compiling the documents earlier this year the fraud unit accelerated the investigation against Lieberman. In January fraud unit detectives questioned Lieberman’s daughter, Michal, on suspicion of being a conduit for funnelling money into his accounts through the company M.L.1, which she owned. Lieberman’s lawyer, Yoav Many, who also serves as the party’s legal adviser, and five other confidants were also detained in the current bribery investigation. Many is suspected of setting up a number of straw companies and opening bank accounts intended for laundering large sums of money.
One of the other detainees, Sharon Shalom, was Lieberman’s personal aide when the latter served as national infrastructure minister. Shalom has been serving as CEO of M.L.1. He allegedly managed several straw companies through which funds were funnelled into Lieberman’s accounts. “This investigation has been going on for 13 years. In today’s investigation Lieberman cooperated and answered investigators’ questions,” Lieberman’s spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.
The police spokesman said that the investigation was continuing and that Mr. Lieberman would be questioned again.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1076264.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6025065.ece
