JERUSALEM, Aug 28: A district tribunal indicted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s son Omri on Sunday in connection with a corruption probe into the funding of his father’s leadership campaign, judicial sources said.
Mr Omri, who is an MP for his father’s main governing right-wing Likud party, was charged by the tribunal in Tel Aviv with providing false testimony and falsifying documents in connection with the 1999 campaign for the Likud leadership.
Attorney general Menachem Mazuz decided to press the charges last month but had to wait until a bill was passed which limited MPs’ immunity against prosecution.
Prosecutors have said that a company controlled by Omri, named Annex Research, took contributions from companies in Israel and abroad worth some 1.3 million dollars, which were all illegally ploughed into his father’s campaign.
The prime minister himself has always insisted that he had no knowledge of the financing of his campaign, saying it was run exclusively by his son who is one of his closest advisors.
Evidence taken from taped phone conversations and documents in 41-year-old Omri’s handwriting form part of the evidence against him, with prosecutors arguing he disguised the true purpose of Annex and effectively “laundered” the incoming funds.
Last year, the prime minister was cleared of involvement in a corruption probe into a property scandal known as the Greek island affair, in which he was suspected of accepting a bribe via his other son Gilad when he was foreign minister in the late 1990s.
A third case against the premier, which is also working its way through the legal system, relates to a 1.5-million-dollar loan from a South African businessman.
Right-wing opponents of Sharon’s disenagement plan, which saw Israel pull all its settlers out of the Gaza Strip last week, have claimed that the project was dreamt up by the prime minister to distract attention away from the corruption inquiries.—AFP
