Israeli police say they suspect Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of “serious fraud” after questioning him for a third time on Friday as part of a widening corruption investigation.
Olmert, who is facing his fifth investigation since taking office two years ago, has not been charged with a crime and says he has broken no law. He has said he will resign only if he is indicted.
Police have been investigating claims that Olmert breached party funding laws by accepting donations from an American businessman over the past decade, mostly through envelopes filled with cash.
After questioning Olmert for more than two hours yesterday, police said they would look, in particular, at the fact that while he was mayor of Jerusalem and then trade and industry minister he asked for “duplicate funding for his trips abroad on public duty from several public bodies, including the state, with each of them requested to fund the same trip.”
“The travel agency which handled Olmert’s trips produced and sent invoices to each of the funding bodies ... as if each of them was solely funding the trips,” the police statement said.
Police said the funding was “significantly greater” than the cost of the trip.
The remainder was put into a special private bank account in Olmert’s name and used to fund his private trips abroad, including those with his family.
Police said their investigation was at an “advanced” stage.
Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem for 10 years until 2003, when he joined the Cabinet of the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said the prime minister was “convinced of his innocence.”
Morris Talansky, the businessman who has testified that he gave US$150,000 in cash to Olmert over several years, is due to be cross-examined next week.
Olmert’s Kadima party will hold internal leadership elections in September and some are urging Olmert not to stand again.
Opinion polls suggest a new leader will be chosen, probably Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS