RAMALLAH, West Bank, 28 April 2007 — Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz is expected to decide in the next few days whether to open a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the light of his alleged role in the Investment Center scandal, the details of which were published Wednesday in a report by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss.
The Lindenstrauss report said that Olmert, while serving as industry, trade and labor minister, may have been guilty of criminal behavior by taking an active part in an Investment Center decision to provide a $10 million grant to a company represented by his close friend, former partner and personal lawyer, Uriel Messer.
If a decision is made to initiate a criminal investigation against the prime minister, it will run in parallel with another investigation into Olmert’s alleged role in the sale of the controlling share of Bank Leumi while he was finance minister.
In this regard, a team from the National Fraud Investigative Unit left for Australia on Wednesday to carry out an investigation of businessman Frank Lowy, a one-time candidate to become controlling shareholder of Bank Leumi. The investigation will be carried out as part of an ongoing probe of Olmert, who is suspected of manipulating conditions of the Bank Leumi privatization process in order to aide Lowy, a personal friend.
For their part, senior officials at the Justice Ministry said privately in recent weeks that it seems a criminal investigation against Olmert in the case of the Investments Center is inevitable. “The final report was received just now,” a Justice Ministry official said on Wednesday, “and it will be evaluated as the prosecutor’s office normally does, along with other relevant materials, and then the matter will be brought before the attorney general for a decision.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli Army on Thursday held intensive training maneuvers in preparation for a feared Syrian attack on the Golan Heights, Israeli sources reported yesterday.
Hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers, backed by helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, massed in the West Bank desert to drill simulations of war. The training exercise focused on Brigade 401 and its utilization of Israel’s most advanced tank — the Merkava Mark 4 — against the Syrian advanced Russian-made T-72.
