WMR's European sources have provided some details of Israeli Foreign Minister's Avigdor Lieberman's organized crime-related activities. Lieberman's racist and organized crime links have a number of world leaders not anxious to be seen in public with him. In fact, after a recent meeting in Berlin between Lieberman and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German insisted that there would be no joint press conference held after their talks.
Although Lieberman's racist attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims in general are problematic for a number of government leaders, it is the fact that Lieberman, a former night club bouncer, is enmeshed in a number of criminal investigations that may end up in his conviction and imprisonment. WMR has learned from German sources that while Transport Minister in Ariel Sharon's government from 2001 to 2002, Lieberman controlled a Cyprus-based firm, Trasimeno Trading Ltd.," that funneled money from Austrian gambling tycoon Martin Schlaff, owner of a firm called Placzek, and Russian-Israeli mob kingpin Michael Chernoy to the coffers of Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, which represents the interests of Israel's Russian and Soviet expatriate community, a group that is highly-infused with criminal elements that help form the nexus for a global criminal enterprise.
The Israeli law enforcement investigation of Lieberman also involves a company controlled by his daughter, Michal Lieberman Galon, "M.L. 1 Ltd.," which is being investigated for laundering over US$3 million for her father's political party.
On January 12, 2006, WMR reported on the Schlaff connection to Ariel Sharon's Likud government:
"According to law enforcement sources, investigators are looking at Abramoff's possible connections to the defunct Oasis Casino in Jericho in the West Bank. The casino, which began operations in 1998, was partly-owned by CAP, a company registered in Liechtenstein in which the Palestinian Authority under Yasir Arafat was a 23 percent shareholder. Another owner was a Vienna, Austria-based casino company, Casinos Austria International, in which Martin Schlaff, a close friend of Sharon, was a major investor. Schlaff's brother, James, is also under investigation. Last week, Israeli police seized computers, cell phones, documents, and a PDA from the home of Schlaff's parents in Israel while he was visiting from Austria. Police also investigated money transfers to Gilad Sharon, Ariel Sharon's son, from South African businessman Cyril Kern and other transfers via BAWAG Bank in Austria. Sharon's other son, Omri, was also financially involved in the Oasis casino.
Although Netanyahu criticized the Oasis casino as providing funding for Palestinian terrorists, investigators are looking at Netanyahu's involvement in helping to steer $140,000 in tribal casino money away from Abramoff's Capitol Athletic Foundation (CAF) charity in Washington, DC to right-wing West Bank settlers in Beitar Illit on the West Bank so they could buy 'security equipment' and sniper lessons. Records indicate a flow of money from CAF to Kollel Ohel Tiferet, a virtually unknown group in Israel. Netanyahu, as Finance Minister in Sharon's former Likud government, would have been aware of money transfers from Abramoff to various Israeli interests, including the settlers and casino interests."
Schlaff is also said to have laundered money for the former security service, the "Stasi," of the ex-German Democratic Republic in eastern Germany. Schlaff also became a major shareholder in Austria's RHI AG, Austria's largest privately-owned industrial group.
WMR has also learned from German sources that the BAWAG Bank was also used to launder money that was involved in illegal nuclear proliferation involving a Liechtenstein-based firm, Galonia Etablissement." The "BAWAG affair" was exposed in 2006 and some US $90 million went missing. It is believed that some of the money ended up in Lieberman's party's coffers in Israel. The scandal and money laundering also places Israel's Foreign Minister in a smuggling network that was under active investigation by CIA counter-proliferation non-official cover agent Valerie Plame Wilson, exposed to the media by a neocon cabal that included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and John Hannah, both Likud loyalists who served in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Schlaff reportedly wants to establish his own bank in Liechtenstein. Which brings up Schlaff's relationship with companies owned by the sons of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement has been accused of massive corruption by the Hamas opposition. Two companies owned by Abbas' sons were recently awarded a more than US$2 million contract by the CIA-linked U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for road construction in West Bank territory controlled by Abbas.
Yasser Abbas, a Canadian-Palestinian businessman, is the owner of Falcon Electro Mechnical Contracting Company, Falcon Trading Group, and Falcon Tobacco. The latter has a monopoly on the sale of American Lucky Strike and Kent cigarettes in the West Bank and Gaza. Falcon Electro Mechanical was one of the beneficiaries of the USAID construction contract. The other USAID contract recipient was Sky Advertising, headed by Tarek Abbas, the Palestinian leader's other son. Yassir Abbas also has his hands in the coffers of the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), originally set up by wealthy Gulf Arabs to fund poor Palestinian farmers and shopkeepers. Instead, the fund, which is flush with some US$1.3 billion, is used to financially back large enterprises, including Wataniya Palestine, a Palestinian telecommunications company that is backed by U.S. and Gulf Arab investments.
With Sharon, Arafat, Abbas, and Sharon's two sons and Abbas's two sons all being part of a contrivance of fraud that is overseen by Israel's Russian- and Eastern European-born Mafia dons, it is easier to understand the outrage of Hamas in Palestine and Israel's shrinking left-wing parties of the nation's socialist-leaning Jewish and Arab population. As far as Israel's Haaretz is concerned, the burgeoning scandal among Israelis and Palestinians is the Russian-Israeli mob having "a finger in every pie."
As President Barack Obama meets this week with Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington, he should know that supporting the current so-called representatives of the Palestinian people, Fatah and the Palestine Authority in any U.S. "showdown" with Netanyahu's Likud coalition with the Russian-Israeli Mafia is a fool's errand.
