US businessman says he gave Olmert $150,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes

We have been hearing for weeks that there are corruption allegations against Ehud Olmert which the press were gagged against making public.

Yesterday, in Israel, Morris Talansky, a long-time supporter and friend of Olmert, was interviewed in an Israeli court before he left for the US in case he never returned. This good friend of Olmert told of how he used to supply the Israeli PM with envelopes stuffed with cash, a practice which he claims Olmert always insisted upon.

Talansky testified that Olmert asked for money in cash. When Talansky asked why it could not be given in cheques, he said Olmert told him it was down to internal regulations in his political party, which was then the rightwing Likud party. "I didn't really grasp it," Talansky said.

He said he saw Olmert as a politician who could reach out to the Jewish community in the US. "That's why I supported the man. That's why I overlooked, frankly and honestly, a lot of things," Talansky said. "I overlooked them. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I overlooked them."

Moshe Lador, the state prosecutor, asked Talansky what disturbed him. "Cash disturbed me," Talansky replied. "I couldn't understand it and I accepted the answer simply because I saw something bigger, hopefully, out there."

Talansky has gone as far as to suggest that some of this money was used to finance Olmert's own lifestyle, although this is unproven.

Talansky said he suspected some of the money he gave went on Olmert's personal expenses. "I only know that he loved expensive cigars. I know he loved pens, watches," he said. Yet Talansky insisted he received no personal gain.

"I had a very close relationship with him but I wish to add at this time that the relationship of 15 years was purely of admiration. I never expected anything personally. I never had any personal benefits from this relationship whatsoever," he said.

The Israeli press are already pronouncing Olmert to be dead in the water. Ha'aretz are saying that Olmert is finished:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's lawyers are right: According to the law, it is not at all clear whether there is something illegal in Olmert's dealings with his own private bank, the "Talansky Bank." It is certainly worth waiting for the cross examination on July 17. It is likely to reveal contradictions about the sums of money, or to refute a story or two like the luxurious family vacation in Italy, which Olmert's attorneys claim never happened.

But no cross examination, no matter how brilliant and effective it may be, will save the politician Ehud Olmert. It will not polish his image nor remove the stench rising from the description of his relationship with Talansky. It will never return Olmert to the days before the investigation.

Publicly, Olmert is finished. There is no going back.

It simply appalls me that Olmert could bomb Lebanon into the dark ages for a crime that the Lebanese did not commit, he could watch his personal popularity drop in the polls to around 3%, and yet still survive as the Israeli PM, but any whiff of financial scandal and he is suddenly finished.

I personally think the crimes he committed in Lebanon are of much greater significance than the charge of taking money in envelopes, and I worry about any system where the taking of money is regarded as more shocking than the killing of innocents through the dropping of thousands of cluster bombs at a time when the UN were negotiating a peace settlement.

And yet that's where we find ourselves. Olmert is on the brink of being brought down for financial avarice rather than for his war crimes. Money is regarded as more important than the lives of innocents. It's a strange, strange, old world.

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Tags: Ehud Olmert, Morris Talansky, Israel, Israel-Lebanon war, financial scandal, cluster bombs