Saturday, December 15, 2012
Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said he will resign after the Israeli attorney general decided to press charges of fraud and breach of trust.
Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein made his decision yesterday, saying the foreign minister received confidential information on a police investigation against him from the former ambassador to Belarus, who pleaded guilty to the charge in May, according to an e-mailed Justice Ministry statement.
Liberman, 54, heads the second-largest party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition government and struck an agreement with the prime minister to run on a joint ticket in next month’s election. Netanyahu issued a statement by text message yesterday congratulating Liberman on the reduced charges and expressing the hope that he’d be acquitted.
Liberman lives in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of a West Bank settlement and Netanyahu close political ally despite the fact that Lieberman joined the Olmert government.
According to EIR, Lieberman also has strong Russian mafia connections. One of his patrons is Michael Cherney, the other Russian "tycoon" based in Israel, who is also wanted by the Russian authorities. Cherney finances the "Jerusalem Summit," which organizes an annual security conference whose advisory board includes Daniel Pipes and Britain's Baroness Caroline Cox, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan), and Yuri Shtern, a Knesset member for Yisrael Beitenu.
