Last update - 00:00 12/11/2007
Cash-filled envelope hints Hirchson corruption dates back to 80s
By Guy Leshem, TheMarker Correspondent
The police's national fraud squad, which is investigating the fraud and theft allegations against former finance minister Abraham Hirchson, received an envelope stuffed with cash Sunday. It was found by chance in the archive of the National Workers Organization (NWO), and the words "for Ovadia Cohen" were written on it.
Cohen was a organization's treasurer, and is one of its former senior officials being investigated. Cohen, who was also Hirchson's closest confidant during the years of the suspected fraud, is one of the chief suspects in the operation in which cash was allegedly stolen from the union and transferred to Hirchson and some of his associates a suspected total of over NIS 12 million from the late 1990s through 2005.
But the envelope, found by an archive worker who was cleaning out files before their computerization, contained 576 old shekels. This suggests that the method of passing on cash-stuffed envelopes dates way back to the early 1980s, before the New Israeli Shekel debuted.
The envelope carries the logo and name of the "Center for the Heritage of Jewish Bravery," the previous name of the March of the Living organization that Hirchson headed.
NWO head Yair Shalem passed the envelope on to the police. "For months I have been busy reorganizing and cleaning up the NWO, and I am constantly amazed by what went on here," Shalem told TheMarker Sunday.
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