The Friday supplement “Sof Shavua” (Weekend) to “Maariv” for June 26, 2008 contains a piece of unprecedented investigative journalism into the latest mass phenomenon on the rise in Israel. The article by Arik Weiss and Eli Bardenshtein fills three columns (plus two more columns of photographs). The article states that a large number of agents retiring from Israel’s International Crime Unit (YAHBAL) are finding new employment with the very people they had investigated not long ago. Former police officers are signing up for work with the oligarchs, including Boris Berezovsky (who resides in the UK but frequently visits Israel), Leonid Nevzlin (residing in Israel, which refuses to extradite him to Russia) and Arkadii Gaidamak (residing in Israel, currently under investigation for money laundering). A number of retired officers are associated with the boss Mikhail Chernoy, whose Israeli citizenship is up for revocation as we speak. A number of these characters are still under YAHBAL surveillance or investigation. With the help of former officers, who are well versed in the tricks and tactics of the Israeli police, the oligarchs are tailoring their moves to keep out of troubles, jails and extraditions. As soon as the police had gotten wind of the matter former employees were barred from entering the YAHBAL headquarters in Petah Tikvah. That may put a damper on information leaks, but invaluable experience and specialized knowledge – now pointed in the other direction – is not a privilege one can take away with regulations… Boris Berezovsky’s (aka Platon Elenin) personal security team is headed by Sagi Migdal, who was an intelligence officer with YAHBAL until 2005, and had previously lived in Russia under the name Sergei Markov. Leonid Nevzlin employs two ex-policemen: Eric Wulf (personal assistant) and Roman Zhelensko (last name back-translated from Hebrew) as head of security. Arkadii Gaidamak has bestowed upon Tirza Zan-Bar the title of “volunteer coordinator” for his political party Tzedek Chevrati (Public Justice). Arranging a meeting with journalists Sagi Migdal says he will be easy to spot, “I have a short beard, like Lieberman.” Of all the bearded men of the world he has “chosen” to identify with the leader of Israel Beiteinu, who has been accused of receiving illegal donations from Mikhail Chernoy. Our suspicions were confirmed: ex-Markov is a close associate of Lieberman, and of Chernoy. Migdal was chief investigator in the case involving Lieberman and Chernoy: and now they are on the same team. Still, jokes Migdal, every time he runs into Chernoy the oligarch goes into convulsions. “Arkadii Gaidamak prefers to cross to the other side when he sees me, even though I never touched his case. What are they all afraid of? I was just doing my job.” But this time it is Migdal who has “crossed to the other side,” and he is still doing his job – protecting people that he used to fight. “Do you find it peculiar that you, with your career track, are now working for an oligarch?” “Berezovsky is a special case. Before going to work for him I weighed all the pros and contras very carefully – and I concluded that there should be no problem. The important thing is not your employer’s personal history, but the way you feel on the job. That is something everyone must answer for themselves.” The response from Migdal’s former colleagues at YAHBAL is not quite so casual. To minimize the damage one of the agency’s directors, Itzhak Norber took up the Sisyphean task of reviewing all the files and folders Migdal would have seen during his years of service (in Israel and abroad). The task proved so difficult and dangerous that Norber and his colleagues had to retreat in panic. “When someone of his caliber leaves, they are taking with them an enormous amount of strategic information. He knows the names of all the informers that were supplying police with information about this or that oligarch. Many of these people were risking their lives to get the information. Now we can’t be sure where this information will end up,” says Norber. In 1995 Israeli police took on a high profile case under the code name “Russian Novel.” It involved a network of criminals cooking up false documents to provide various shady individuals – including key figures in the Russian mafia – with Israeli citizenship. A corrupt official had already issued citizenship papers and travel documents to 30 members of the Solntsevo gang. Soon after the scam was discovered many of the mafiosi vanished. The officials realized that this was just the beginning. Russian criminal bosses and shady oligarchs were swiftly penetrating into Israel and sending their envoys to scope out the territory. Israel turned out to be a convenient safe haven for dubious operations. To combat the new reality Israeli police created the International Crime Unit YAHBAL. The chief intelligence officer for “Russian Novel” was none other than Sagi Migdal. “Israel is very vulnerable in this sense: here you can buy not only puppets, but puppet politicians, who are not too squeamish about money,” says another former YAHBAL agent. Now it seems you can also buy police officers… The same year, 1995, Stanislav Yazhemskii emigrated from Russia to Israel. Soon he was working for YAHBAL. It is alleged that Yazhemskii was the first who provided oligarchs with confidential information. In 2001 he and his family fled Israel, taking with them a slew of strategic materials. Yazhemskii explained his vanishing act – via his lawyer Chanan Gold – as a way of escaping retribution for filing a complaint against then head of YAHBAL Moshe Mizrahi, who was investigating the former “alluminm king” Mikhail Chernoy. The complaint alleged that Mizrahi had compromised his office by ordering an illegal wiretap on Avigdor Lieberman. The extent of materials Yazhemskii carried with him out of Israel is still uncertain. Which of the oligarchs ended up with it is something the Israeli police can probably guess, but not something they can prove.
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