Life is becoming increasingly complicated for MK (Labor) Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who was forced to drop out of the presidential race amid allegations of tax evasion and other white collar crimes. Police on Monday, 11 Sivan 5774 opened the MKs safety deposit box, in a Jerusalem Israel Discount Bank and found $600,000 in cash. Police now suspect this too is unreported income.
Regarding the ongoing investigation against him, police theorize that $400,000 given to him by Avraham Nanikashvili was bribe money, not a loan as the MK is claiming. That said, it does not appear that police have evidence to back up the bribe allegation, while Ben-Eliezer has produced a document stating the money was a loan to a friend, nothing more.
Police however suspect that the two signed a fictitious loan agreement; once again, the allegation is not backed by evidence at this time.
NOTE: Some reports state the amount of cash found in the safe deposit box was $510,000. There also reports citing different amounts.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
4 Responses
“Little tin box”???
— at least he wasn’t doing something that goes against public policy such as funding yeshivos and tsadakos (then they throw the book at you).
Quite amusing. Suddenly someone decides to run for president, and he gets invesgated. Seems like there is a mafia here to decide who gets investigated to stop them from leadership. Probably all of these “government officials ” are corrupt as we saw from Olmert! You think lapid and bibi are innocent?? NO WAY!
One should note that many if not most Israeli politicians are substantially better off than they were before they became full time parliamentarians. Of course they might have made good investments, or have had a “little tin box” of their own, but it is dubious that their net wealth and standard of living have increased while in theory they were living off of modest public salaries.
This is NOT quite amusing – at least, we shouldn’t be the one’s amused.
Members of knesset do not receive “modest public salaries”. They receive 25,000 NIS per month plus expenses and staff. Of course, the ministers make even more than that.