Not long after hearing about the murder of crime boss Ya'akov Alperon on Monday, a well-known Tel Aviv underworld figure rattled off the names of Yitzhak Abergil, the brothers Rafi and Moshe Ohana, and Amir Mulner as people who had an ongoing blood feud with Alperon and also the means to settle it. The source cited as possible motives the January 2006 stabbing of Mulner in the plush Daniel Hotel in Herzliya, and the brutal attack on him and his cronies in a Tel Aviv restaurant in March that same year. On both occasions, Mulner was humiliated, and Alperon, his son Dror and his brother Nissim were involved.
"Everyone and his uncle tried to make peace between them," the underworld source continued. "Ya'akov wanted that very much, but Mulner would not hear of it. In the current reality, with the Abergils and the Ohana brothers in over their heads and behind bars for a long time, if you consider the clean and professional manner in which the man was done in - I say there is only one possible direction: Mulner."
Mulner, 35, left the country a few days before Alperon's murder. His lawyer, Motti Katz, who this week denied the accusations against his client, in his name, says Mulner would not have spoken to the media in any case. "It's one of his long-standing principles not to give interviews, because he thinks the media and public relations are no good," Katz says. "It is the police's job to investigate the murder. If there were evidence against him, they would have questioned him. It is not for someone who is not a suspect to go to the media and say he had nothing to do with it."
Other actions attributed to Mulner - the son of a police officer from Ramat Gan - include planting small but lethal explosive charges in the scooter of Sa'ad Azoulay from Ramat Amidar, in the seat headrest of "Rabbi" Simon Hadif from Pardes Katz, in the Jeep of Yisrael Elis on Herzl Street in Tel Aviv, and in the car driven by Ya'akov Alperon.
Mulner was the right-hand man of Yossi Harari, himself a protege of Alperon, who in the early 1980s controlled all the cable-television stations in metropolitan Tel Aviv.
Harari, then in his early twenties, was chosen to manage and develop the project in his neighborhood of Pardes Katz. Harari and Alperon were involved in dealing hash together. The duo was the first to institutionalize organized debt collection. That was the channel by which Alperon formed partnerships in legitimate business enterprises in a wide variety of fields - businesses whose owners owed money or needed his protection.
"Ya'akov would get the check to collect and pass it on to Harari, who had a whole gang working for him under the direct command of his brother, Roni Harari," according to an Alperon associate. "There was a gang of 'disturbed' kids, who made trouble for people who owed money to businessmen: stabbings, spikes, cigarettes on faces. People were scared to death of them. In cases of stubborn refusal, all Ya'akov had to do was walk past the debtor without saying a word. That was enough."
A year in prison
In 1993, the police managed temporarily to get the better of the gang, who worked out of a club on Soncino Street in Tel Aviv. Alperon was convicted of blackmail, because he was in the same room as one of the debtors who was under threat by the gang. The conviction was a key precedent in trials involving charges of extortion and threats. He was sentenced to seven years in prison; Yossi and Roni Harari were given seven- and five-year prison terms, respectively. Mulner spent a year in prison for extortion involving the owner of a travel agency in Ramat Gan.
"Harari was captivated by Mulner," says a friend of Alperon's. "He spotted the potential in this quiet fellow from a good family, who was looking for thrills and stood up to the police like a man. I mean, he didn't confess and didn't blow the whistle. Mulner, who was a discharged combat soldier, knew about weapons and was creative. To this day, people talk about the penetration of the garage where Hadif's car was parked, in which a small, lethal bomb was planted in Hadif's headrest [in 1998]."
Attorney Katz says in response: "Mulner was not questioned and not arrested for involvement in those assassinations ... There is a great deal of intelligence information about him, but he has not been questioned about most of it, as is the case now with the rumors that are being spread about him."
Not long after the Hadif murder, Yossi Harari went to visit friends in Johannesburg. Mulner arrived in South Africa after him. A few good friends were waiting for them there, headed by Shai Avishar, a Jerusalem mobster who hooked up with Harari in the 1980s. Avishar moved to Johannesburg in 1990 with a group of people identified with the Ramat Amidar gang. They specialized in the blackmail and extortion of Jewish business owners. Harari returned to Israel in 1999, but the flow of cash from South Africa continued, because Avishar and another mobster, Lior Sa'ad, stayed behind to look after things. Shortly after Harari returned to Israel as a rich man, he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison in the wake of evidence given by state's witness Nissim Yemin, who incriminated both him and Mulner in the Hadif murder.
Avishar was murdered in South Africa on October 17, 1999. Mulner, deterred from returning to Israel by Yemin's testimony, stayed in South Africa. But in April 2001, Sa'ad was arrested in connection with the Avishar murder and three other murders. A week later, as Sa'ad was being transferred from jail to a Johannesburg court, two motorcycle riders drove by the vehicle that was carrying him and rained automatic fire on it. One detainee was killed, and Sa'ad and another detainee sustained moderate wounds. The local press described the attack as an attempt to kill Sa'ad.
Not long afterward, Mulner fled South Africa to the Mexican resort town of Cancun, where he established an enclave of exiled Israeli mob figures. Three years later, on June 1, 2004, Yemin was murdered by an assailant who climbed a ladder to shoot him from his window as he sat in his wheelchair watching television. Mulner returned to Israel at the end of that month and settled his financial affairs with Harari in a meeting held in Harari's villa in Caesarea, in the presence of attorney Eli Cohen and the Mosli brothers - underworld figures from Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood. Sa'ad also settled his legal affairs, returned to Israel and joined up with Mulner.
In Tel Aviv, Mulner frequented a well-known cafe on Bograshov Street, which belonged to a close friend of his, a muscular guy with tattoos from Herzliya Pituah with a black Jeep and very close ties with another crime group, the Yosef brothers. They talked enthusiastically about his "high-class" look, about the big money, the perfect operations and the conjectured list of assassinations.
"I would not describe him as rich, but average," attorney Katz says. "He is not interested in brand names. He doesn't drive fancy cars and is not seen in prestigious nightclubs. He is not that type of person. He is not [jailed mob boss Ze'ev] Rosenstein. He was just renting a place in the Akirov [Towers], and people were already saying he owned the tower."
The Arab sector
In the past two years, Mulner has traveled a good deal in the Far East. "He wanders around like the ultimate backpacker," says an Israeli who lives in Thailand and has met Mulner on several occasions. "You will see him always in the company of good people in all kinds of backpackers' meeting places, on his way to exotic countries. He is always very courteous and polite, not vulgar like most of the Israelis. He does not go to brothels and keeps his distance from drugs and especially from drug dealers. And yes, he also met there with Israeli businessmen, but always quietly, in a way that was hardly noticeable."
In the meantime, Mulner's connections with Yossi Harari slackened somewhat. He maintained reasonable relations with Ya'akov Alperon and met with him occasionally until an altercation in the Daniel Hotel (Sa'ad was also there at the time). The brawl broke out over a debt of NIS 600,000 that Alperon wanted to collect from someone who was under Mulner's protection. After that their relations were strained.
Mulner has excellent relations with underworld figures in the Arab sector. They also exchange information and technological methods. His only conviction for an offense involving combat materials is for possessing an explosive, in an incident in which he and two members of the Karajeh hamula (clan) from the Triangle area were arrested in Baka al-Garbiyeh in the middle of the night.
In the past, Mulner was said to be involved in the plastic-bottle recycling business. One of his men, Shlomo Kedem, is accused of having bribed employees of the recycling concern. Kedem says he has nothing to do with Mulner. Mulner is also known to conduct fair arbitration and to make just judgments. Like Alperon, he has hidden partnerships in business of all kinds, including well-known nightclubs and cafes. No crime family will go looking for trouble in a business to which Mulner has connections - not the Jerushis from Ramle or the Abutbuls from Netanya. Alperon took a different approach and was eliminated.
