Police grill Lieberman for the second time in three days.
Avigdor Lieberman the foreign minister of the new government
of Israel is under the suspicion of
money laundering, and is
questioned again and again by the police. He took up his new position of foreign minister in the beginning of this week. This is not the last time that he has been interrogated, this will continue for some time, police said.
The National Fraud Unit detectives have also questioned the chairman of Israel Beiteinu to know where the proceeds of his business dealings have gone.
Although Lieberman is in complete denying mode, police is not with him thinking he is guilty of wrong doings in financial matters, and hope to indict him sometime in the coming months.
This may be a special occasion that he is the foreign minister, but he was questioned earlier too in an alleged money laundering in April 2007. Since then the detectives have collected many incriminating documents in this respect. The important point to note is that about 1000 of these documents were confiscated from the attorney’s office of Lieberman. Some other 2500 documents were collected from Cyprus by the detectives. Document from Lieberman’s business associates are said to be vital to understand his money laundering network.
The Tel Aviv magistrate Benny Sagi is of the positive opinion about Lieberman’s involvement in money laundering after studying those documents collected by the detectives and other agencies. The matter cannot be ignored as sums deposited in Lieberman’s accounts are big amounts, sometimes in millions of Shekels. The Judge also said, deposits were made in regular intervals month wise.
The investigation was accelerated in the month of January, 2009 after completing compilations of collected documents. His daughter Michal was also interrogated, because the authority believe that she might had worked as a conduit for channeling money into his accounts. Yoav Many, who is the legal advisor of the party, also serves as the lawyer for Lieberman at the same time. He along with some other confidants of Lieberman too have been taken into custody on account of bribery.
Sharon Shalom, who is now the CEO of ML.1 was hand in glove with Lieberman at the time of his being the national Infrastructure minister, in his wrong doings. Shalom managed many straw companies then, and helped channeling funds to Lieberman’s accounts large sums of money.
Etinger, Lieberman’s spoke woman reiterated that her boss has cooperated in the interrogations fully in recent times. For 13 years authorities are trying to find out the truth of Lieberman’s money laundering. This long arduous time, he is under the eye of investigating authorities, is strenuous for Lieberman, and he appealed to the High Court Justice for relieving him from this, spoke woman said.
He is hopeful that this time the investigation will come to an end that went on for long 13 years.