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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. (Tess Scheflan / Jini)
Last update - 13:53 31/05/2008
Olmert's memo: If you want me, pay for 'first class' hotels, flights
By Gidi Weitz
Tags: Israel, Ehud Olmert 

There was a form in Ehud Olmert's bureau, which was sent out to the various organizations that financed his trips abroad and stipulated the conditions of his lodgings. The document, which was made available to Haaretz, states that the organization inviting Olmert must underwrite a suite in a 'first class' hotel, preferably one in which cigar smoking is permitted. The hotel has to be equipped with a gym.

Olmert's flights, too, always had to be first class. Indeed a flight that he took in February 2005, while serving as industry and trade minister, to a dinner in Palm Beach, Florida, to participate in an event organized by the March of the Living organization with his friend Avraham Hirchson, cost about $20,000. In September 2004, he flew to New York for two days at the expense of the mogul Edmundo Safdie, to attend a reception. The cost of the first-class ticket: $7,600.

On October 2, 2005, while serving as vice prime minister and finance minister, Olmert flew to Washington for a short trip with his wife, Aliza, who was exhibiting a collection of her art in the American capital under the title 'Tikkun' (which in Hebrew means 'repairing' or 'restoring'). Morris Talansky paid about $4,700 for the couple's three-night stay in a hotel.
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This is not the first time Mrs. Olmert's paintings have been mentioned in a police investigation. In 1991, her husband was investigated on suspicion of having accepted illegal donations for the Likud's 1988 election campaign, when he was the party's treasurer. During the questioning, in a police facility, the interrogators surprised Olmert by asking, according to the files: "In November 1988, your wife, Aliza, and one of your children went to the United States. What was the purpose of their trip?"

Olmert: "A private trip."

Interrogator: "Who paid for the trip?"

Olmert: "Generally, I pay for my family's or my own private trips."

Interrogator: "Was that trip paid for by Likud funds?"

Olmert: "I am astounded by the question. I never dealt with the technical side of payment for my trips. That is always done by my assistant, Shula Zaken, who is in ongoing contact with the travel agency and debits my account according to need. I would imagine that if there was a problem regarding a payment, she would have told me, but I never heard anything like that from her, and I never asked for Likud funds to be used to pay for a private trip of mine or of anyone else in my family. I suggest you ask Mrs. Zaken."

Heeding Olmert's recommendation, the police summoned Zaken, then the bureau chief of health minister Ehud Olmert, for questioning on June 13, 1991, at the headquarters of the National Fraud Investigations Unit. They showed her evidence that the Olmert family's trip was paid for with funds suspected of passing through the Likud coffers. "I know about that trip, I handled the arrangements," the loyal bureau chief replied. "I remember it well, because the trip was intended for one of Mrs. Olmert's exhibitions abroad. It was a private trip to exhibit paintings in New York."

Zaken denied paying for the trip in cash. Her explanation of the trip being financed by Likud funds was that there had been confusion in the travel agency between payment for the private trip of the Olmerts and payment for trips abroad by senior Likud officials. This episode was part of the investigation of the alleged fictitious receipts affair, for which Olmert was tried in 1996, and acquitted.

A month ago, when Olmert was questioned by the police in the Talansky affair, he again suggested that the interrogators ask Zaken for answers concerning the money he received from the American businessman. This time Zaken preferred to invoke the right to remain silent.

In February 2006, a month before the elections in which Olmert became prime minister, Zaken celebrated her 49th birthday at an extravagant party held in an Eilat hotel. The event was organized by her good friend Simu Tubol, a Jerusalem businessman. Zaken also invited other close friends, such as attorney Uri Messer, cabinet secretary Oved Yehezkel, former Jerusalem city engineer Uri Sheetrit and others. The group went on a cruise, danced and enjoyed a festive meal.

Afterward they all gathered at the hotel. Zaken took a microphone and told her friends, as she wiped away a tear, "I thank you for viewing my job as a mission, as I myself view it. What I want most is to see Ehud sitting in the chair."

A few months after Olmert was elected prime minister, officers of the Fraud Investigations Unit came to Zaken's home in the early morning and interrogated her at the unit's headquarters. Zaken was suspected of having promoted the candidacy of Jacky Matza as head of the Israel Tax Authority, in return for which he would give her friends key jobs in the authority. Among other things, Zaken was questioned on suspicion that she had asked Matza to intervene in a criminal proceeding against Tubol, who had organized her birthday party in Eilat.


In his court deposition this week, Talansky said it was Zaken who called him in New York to ask him to prepare money for Olmert, and that it was she who received most of the envelopes of cash from him. She also documented in her computer the cash transfers on several occasions. Zaken is far from the grotesque caricature of her portrayed on the satirical television program 'A Wonderful Country.' She is both smart and politically savvy.

In 1999, Olmert effectively supported the election of Labor Party chairman Ehud Barak as prime minister by declaring publicly in a Jerusalem hotel that, "Barak will not divide Jerusalem." Zaken had been opposed to Olmert's support for Barak, so much that she tried to stop him physically from going to that event. Olmert's statement was prominent in all of Barak's television ads and was extremely harmful to the campaign of then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud. Zaken was, in fact, prescient: A few months later Olmert was trounced by Ariel Sharon in the battle for the Likud leadership; the party faithful accused Olmert of betraying both Netanyahu and the party.

Zaken accompanied Olmert for 30 years, handled his private accounts and was even able to tell him, at the beginning of 2005, that he had NIS 2 million in his bank account. She also reminded him every year to call Talansky on his birthday to wish him well.

One of Zaken's friends recently recalled that when she asked Zaken, a month after Olmert's election as prime minister, what she was up to, she replied without hesitation: "I am appointing cabinet ministers." Fraud unit personnel obtained printouts from Zaken's bank accounts in order to trace money transfers from Talansky. "I am ready to swear that Zaken did not get money from Talansky," one of her close friends said this week. "If she got into trouble, it was only because she did not understand the limits of power."

Since being questioned in the Talansky affair, she has hardly left the house. Her relations with Olmert have soured. Since the tax authority case she has complained frequently that the boss is not devoting enough time and attention to her.

In November 2005, the new finance minister, Ehud Olmert, flew to New York to attend the celebration of his grandson's circumcision. In the morning, a heavyset, white-haired man wearing a black skullcap arrived at the reception desk of the luxury Regency Hotel and asked the clerk where a "Mr. Risby" was staying. He then took the elevator up to the suite and knocked on the door.

The door opened and his old friend, Ehud Olmert, embraced the visitor, Talansky, warmly. "He asked for a loan of $15,000," Talansky recalled this week in his deposition to the Jerusalem District Court. Talansky said he went to a Citibank branch near the hotel, withdrew the money, put it in a bank envelope and gave it to Olmert. He said he told Olmert that he wanted the money back soon.

Olmert denied having received the money when he was questioned by the police. A police check revealed that the date of his stay in New York coincides with the date on which Talansky withdrew the amount of money he testified about.

On the eve of Olmert's trip, his bureau asked the Israeli consulate in New York to organize working meetings for him. Thanksgiving was imminent, and the consulate could only set up a few of them, in Olmert's hotel suite. The Finance Ministry told Haaretz this week that Olmert's flight on that occasion, costing some NIS 19,000, was paid for by the state. He also received expenses. Because of the meetings, Olmert's bureau turned a private trip into a working visit, paid by the state. In reply to a question from Haaretz, Olmert's bureau said this week, "The matter is under investigation and will be clarified in the future." Talansky was not invited to the circumcision ceremony, and in his deposition said he was deeply hurt by this.

In that same month, November 2005, in which Talansky allegedly handed the fat envelope to Olmert, Olmert sent a letter to billionaire Sheldon Adelson asking him to assist Talansky's mini-bar business. Olmert sent another letter to the defense minister of Chile, Jaime Ravinet de la Fuente, asking him to assist ImageSat, a company that markets satellite imagery, in which Talansky is an investor. In his letter, published here for the first time, Olmert wrote: "Dear Minister Ravinet, I was very pleased to learn from Mr. Shimon Eckhaus, CEO of ImageSat International, about your meeting and the possible joint space program with Chile. We in Israel have recognized that imaging satellite [sic] is a perfect subject for dual-use applications. The Israeli Ministry of Defense is one of ImageSat customers and I hope that Chile will join us as well and benefit from our vast experience in this field. If I can be of any further assistance in any way, please do not hesitate to contact me. With kind regards, Sincerely, Ehud Olmert." Talansky stated in court that he did not ask Olmert to write this letter.

One meeting appearing on the itineraries of Olmert's trips to New York, which were found by the police, is a get-together with Talansky in a fancy restaurant called Thalassa, in Tribeca on November 2, 2004, at 2:45 P.M. The restaurant specializes in lobster and organic food and has a 5,000-bottle wine cellar. The timetable shows that the Olmert-Talansky meeting lasted only 15 minutes: At 3 P.M., Olmert was to meet his son Shaul and another person for lunch in the same restaurant.

Talansky stated in court this week that 15 minutes was the time Olmert usually allotted him. But when interrogators asked him about the restaurant meeting, he denied it altogether. "Thalassa? How do you spell it?" he asked, adding that he does not frequent nonkosher restaurants. Olmert also denied the meeting took place.

A few days before the officers from the fraud squad showed up unexpectedly at his house at 6 A.M. and took Talansky for questioning, the American businessman met with attorney Uri Messer. Talansky told the police that Messer had tried to find out from him whether he had been questioned by the police about his relations with Olmert. Messer stated in his interrogation that it was in fact Talansky who told him he had been questioned in the United States about the matter, and tried to find out if he, Messer, knew anything. Messer said he asked Talansky to leave immediately.

In his deposition, Talansky related that he had met Messer in New York before and through him had twice delivered envelopes of cash to Olmert. Talansky said that when he sent money to finance Olmert's election campaigns, Messer recommended that he split the donation - which exceeded the limit allowed under Israeli law - into several checks, from members of Talansky's family. Messer denied having making such a suggestion.

In 1999, $300,000 was transferred from Talansky's private account, for which Messer had power of attorney, as a bond to cover the debt run up by United Jerusalem, the list under which Olmert ran for mayor. The bond was forfeited in 2002. The differences between the Talansky and Messer versions concerning this episode are reported here for the first time.

When Talansky was asked by interrogators if he knew that money from his private account had been transferred to the account of the United Jerusalem association through Messer, he reacted furiously: "He used my money? He will go to jail if he did that. He will be disbarred. I have to talk to my lawyer. I am in shock!" When Messer was asked by the police if he had informed Talansky before deciding on the forfeiture of the bond to cover the election debts, he replied, "Of course. The forfeit occurred only in 2002. I informed him both beforehand and afterward. To your question, he reacted with disappointment. He did not like that at all, and I did not like it, either, I did not want it to happen and I made many efforts to avoid it."

Can one reasonably assume that Talansky did not know that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been withdrawn from his account? Is it possible the money that was transferred belonged to someone else? If so, who is behind this very large sum? Was Talansky's account used as a straw account? And what is Olmert's involvement in this matter?

The Talansky affair emerged from a police investigation that dealt with the give-and-take relations between Olmert and attorney Uri Messer. In August 2006, Haaretz Magazine published a report that exposed for the first time Olmert's actions as industry and trade minister on behalf of Messer's clients. It was not until October 2007, more than a year later, after much vacillation and delay, that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered an investigation into the suspicions raised by the Haaretz article and by the harsh report issued by the State Comptroller's Office on the same subject. The police seemed to be in no rush to thoroughly investigate the sensitive information it possessed from the beginning about the Olmert-Talansky ties.

In March 2008, the Fraud Investigations Unit was about to wrap up the Olmert-Messer affair and send the file to the State Prosecutor's Office for a final decision. Already then the police team had evidence that Olmert actively assisted Messer's clients and also promoted a grant of tens of millions of shekels to one of the companies Messer represented. Additional evidence showed that for years Messer supplied Olmert with political and legal services free of charge or for low fees.

One of the police officers who saw memos about the money transfers Zaken recorded in her computer, was certain that those involved would have explanations for them. "They will tell us that it's from the sale of a private property," he said. It is clear today that if Mazuz had not waited so long before deciding to launch an investigation into the suspicions against Olmert, the Talansky affair would have come to light already a year ago.

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      1.   First class hotels and flights? 23:32  |  Natallie Durson 30/05/08
      2.   Live Large Fall Large 23:34  |  Leor 30/05/08
      3.   One more confirmation AG Mazuz waz coverinng-up for Olmert 23:51  |  Absolute Sweden 30/05/08
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      7.   WE KNEW HE WAS CORRUPT ALL ALONG;THE QUESTION NOW IS HOW MUCH.... 05:45  |  glenna 31/05/08
      8.   First Class, cigars and the high life... 06:01  |  Maureen Ann 31/05/08
      9.   #5 Maureen Ann 06:31  |  * BEN JABO 31/05/08
      10.   I smoke a cigar every day. Is it a crime? 07:21  |  Yaakov Sullivan 31/05/08
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      15.   Cigar smoking 08:17  |  Rowan 31/05/08
      16.   Olmert`s Latest Memo...... 08:25  |  Dolly 31/05/08
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      19.   Entirely superfluous... 09:14  |  Esther 31/05/08
      20.   OLMERT IS A CRIMINAL THAT SHOULD BE BEHIND BARS! 09:38  |  OLMERT=CRIMINAL 31/05/08
      21.   Bravo (for once only) Natallie Durson #1 09:44  |  S 31/05/08
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      29.   The Real World 11:49  |  guy 31/05/08
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      31.   To AJ # 22 - Jibes at the PM at this moment 12:42  |  The Thoughttful one 31/05/08
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      44.   Allan Miller #32 20:35  |  S 31/05/08
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      46.   What Did Olmert Do in Return??? 22:20  |  isratinian 31/05/08
      47.   British legacy 22:24  |  Keops 31/05/08
      48.   Re S #37 22:33  |  Esther 31/05/08
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