Abstract: So long as it was Avraham Gindi that was being held in detention, the public looked upon the whole affair as a financial scandal: a big contractor whose brothers had fled abroad in fear of the investigation was suspected of selling land plots under false pretenses . . . But when [on 4 December] Avi Tzur was arrested, overnight the affair became the political smash hit of the season. Tzur was an aide to Micha'el Dekel when the latter served as deputy minister of agriculture under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Another one of Dekel's aides, Claude Malka, was also arrested and subsequently released. Tzur and Malka are members of the Herut Central Committee. Dekel is one of Yitzhak Shamir's two henchmen in the party. The police suspect West Bank dealer Ahmad 'Awdah, building magnate Avraham Gindi, and others of transferring tens of thousands of dollars to Tzur to finance Herut propaganda in the last elections. They further suspect Tzur of having siphoned off some of the money for himself before turning it over to the party. In exchange, Tzur gave Gindi letters signed by the deputy minister's office which attested that the establishment of a [residential] villa settlement had been authorized [by the government]. The threat of being embroiled in a bribery case threw the Shamir camp into a panic and heated things up in the other Likud factions. They didn't defend Tzur's good name, nor the good name of the party for that matter. They acted like men out to protect themselves. Tzur, 36, will find it difficult to emerge from this affair as a hero. Tall, giving off an
Publication Year: 1986
Publication Date: 1986-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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