STOPCRIME.RU - A fugitive Russian oligarch tried to reach an “understanding” in his business affairs in Israel. The police are having a fit…

Yekaterina Belova,
based on material from the newspaper Haaretz

The famous Israeli journalist, Gidi Weiz (Haaretz), who wrote a series of articles on the corrupt practices and questionable personal ties of ex-minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the party "Our Home-Israel", recently published new, sensational material based on wiretaps and surveillance conducted by the investigative unit of the Israeli police force, Yakhbal.
His previous articles--"The Little Landlady” (on the consulting firm specializing in work with Eastern European companies that was opened in the name of Lieberman's daughter), “A Trip to the Business World of Avigdor Lieberman" (which pulled back the curtain on numerous trade secrets of the Israeli parliament), “With His Hand on Everything” (about the politician's suspicious business ties with the fugitive Russian oligarch, Chyorny, and the Austrian tycoon, Schlaff)—have created quite a stir in Israeli society by revealing the links between Israeli politicians and criminal leaders of Russian descent, the illegal sponsorship they provide, and the shady business they conduct in Israel in accordance with their purely Russian sensibilities.
In his latest piece of investigative journalism on how power is bought in Israel and by whom, Weiz puts the spotlight on the relationship between the controversial politician and the businessman, David Apel, who is currently under investigation. Apel gave Knesset deputy Lieberman 700 thousand shekels the day before the 1999 election and allegedly financed his security expenses in exchange for "consultations."

Much of the article is devoted to another "big time" friend of Lieberman--Mikhail Chyorny, the former "aluminum magnate" currently residing in Israel, who was turned away from several countries for suspicion of money laundering and connections with organized crime. The Israel government has already debated the issue of stripping Chyorny of Israeli citizenship several times, but for some reason they continue to drag their feet on deporting this fugitive oligarch.

Weiz's article also presents to the reader previously unpublished fragments of the police’s secret recordings of “behind-the-scenes” conversations between these businessmen. Although they lacked a common language and required a translator, these men nonetheless tried to reach an “understanding."

The bugs recorded a curious conversation between Mikhail Chyorny and Dudi Apel, with Zeev Rom, considered Chyorny's "right hand man" in Israel, acting as interpreter. In the course of the discussion, Chyorny (who had not yet mastered Hebrew at that point, despite the fact that he had been living in the country since 1994) says to Rom in Russian, “Zeev, let’s just barge into the commission (and tell them) that I want to buy 5% of Bezek”.

Rom then translates this into Hebrew for Apel as, “If he submits an application stating that he wants to buy more than 5% of Bezek, will they let him or not?" Apel answers that "for Bezek you need special permission." Chyorny can’t be persuaded and he insists, “Let's go anyway!" Apel lays down some of the laws of the land for Chyorny, saying "Nothing will happen before the elections. They won't sell now, I'm telling you. We're getting ready to win these elections. Believe me everything will look different then."
Rom translates for Chyorny: “He says that now, when there will be elections, we are going to win them. So everything will look different then…Right now he doesn’t think there will privatization…He suggests that we do it when the government is different, and then everything will be completely different."

Chyorny still wants to go sort things out with the permit. Rom then explains that "permits are only given out by the government. Our people are going to be there, it’s going to be our government, and then everything is going to be different.” Apel says, “We are gonna take care of the situation. All we need is some time.”

Apel and Chyorny met each other through mutual friends. It is entirely possible that the Israeli contractor was introduced to Chyorny as a person with influence in the government. Chyorny needed these kinds of connections after he was declared a persona non grata by Bulgaria in 2000. Rumors of the suspicious connections and deals connected with the oligarch’s name forced the government of Bulgaria to take this dramatic decision, and Chyorny was forced to renounce ownership of the local mobile communications giant, Mobitel, the value of which was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now Chyorny and Apel have denounced one another, leveling all kinds of accusations at one another. According to Apel's version, as set forth in his court application, Chyorny promised him generous commissions on the order of tens of millions of dollars for acting as his intermediary if Apel could find him a buyer for the company and quick. Rom, Chyorny’s "right hand man”, handled this deal on behalf of Chyorny.

But nothing came of it. In 2001, Chyorny sold Mobitel to a group of Austrian businessmen, which included the magnate, Martin Schlaff.

In July of 2002, the “aluminum” company belonging to Chyorny brought forth a bankruptcy claim against Apel, who ran up a debt of 13 million shekels at the company. The source of the debt was three bounced checks signed by Apel. In his court application, Apel explained that this money was given to him as down payment for acting as intermediary in the Mobitel deal. Chyorny, on the other hand, claimed that the money was a loan issued to Apel for his grandiose international business projects.

For 3 years already a trial has been going on in a Tel-Aviv court against Makhail Chyorny and Zeev Roman, who are being indicted, along with the businessman Gad Zeevi, for attempting to acquire the company Bezek under false pretences. According to the indictment, the defendants assumed that Chyorny, in light of his problematic business past, wouldn’t be able to get a permit from the ministry of communications to acquire shares of Bezek. It was therefore decided that Chyorny's role in the deal would be hush-hush, and Zeevi would act as the sole purchaser.

As the recording devices make clear, the relationship between Chyorny and Zeevi was hostile, even when they were doing business together. Chyorny’s suspicion that Zeevi was “taking him for a ride” in money matters was so strong that in one of the recorded conversations he said of Rom: "Let's take him out! If he’s gonna act like that, let’s just take the son of a bitch out!”

And in other conversations with his assistant about Rom that were recorded by the police, Chyorny lays the abuse on thick: "That effin’ businessman, the f…er. If he says ‘Russian Mafia’, say ‘And who are you?’ Tell him that he isn't worth our little pinky! The fa...ot!”
The oligarch has much to say about Apel too. "Dudi is a blackmailer," Chyorny tells Rom. “He calls you 'friend’ but only wants money.”

Incidentally, Chyorny doesn’t offer much in the way of a reward to his assistant: he decides to fire Rom after coming to suspect him of secretly colluding with his former partners-cum-rivals.

The Israeli police, journalists, and people in general were not shocked by the sleazy vocabulary of this nouveau-riche thief so much as his way of thinking, his higher faculties, so to speak. A man who can’t even learn a few words of the language where he has been hiding out for 14 years, who even in Russian can’t construct a coherent sentence without plastering it with curses, whose business practices consist of “getting nasty”, “stiffing”, and “ducking”, and who at the least sign of business troubles proposes "taking out" his former partner--this is the man that Gidi Weiz has revealed to Israel society in his articles.

The court proceedings against Chyorny, Apel, and Zeevi are expected to come to an end in 2009. Israeli businessmen who soiled their names by working with Chyorny are facing not only a blow to their reputation, but a significant blow to their wallets as well.

An indictment of the now utterly disgraced ex-minister Lieberman is also being prepared.

Israel is on threshold of new elections for the Knesset, which most political commentators see has the first battle in a fight against corruption. Everyone who wants power, choose the path to it that they can climb—by employing habits acquired of the years, like “purchasing” parties and deputy seats for one’s puppets, without sparing any expense, watching one's language, or caring about who they step on along the way.

But there comes a moment when the government begins to understand that corruption is a malignant tumor that will continue to grow unless it is dealt with.