Western sanctions targeting oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin’s regime are having cascading effects. Many are trying to emigrate to Israel, where laws granting citizenship and income protection are favorable to them, according to The Markerthe economic supplement of Ha’Aretz.
“Officially, Israeli banks should align themselves with the new rules imposed by the European Union and the United States. But, in fact, the State of Israel is not bound by any Western recommendations and has not to date announced any restrictions on Russian companies operating on its soil.
This is revealed by an extensive investigation by journalist Shuki Sadeh published in The Marker, the economic and financial supplement of the Israeli daily Ha’Aretz, about the web of financial and political interests linking Israel to a Russian economy largely based on money laundering.
Who are these oligarchs who could pass or have already slipped through the cracks of the Western net without losing too many feathers? “There are many of them, but apart from the highly publicized Roman Abramovich, the biggest names are Moshe Kantor, Mikhail Fridman, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg”.
For one of the rare and former Russian-speaking Israeli leftist members of the Knesset, Roman Bronfman, “none of the oligarchs has clean hands, and for two decades they have all benefited from Israel’s particularly loose financial legislation”.
The influence of ex-Soviet Jews in Israel
This flexibility is also explained, underlines Shuki Sadeh, by the weight acquired by the ex-Soviet Jews of Israel, these “kingmakers” within the dominant parties, including the Likud.
Thus, Ze’ev Elkin (born Vladimir Borisovitch Elkin in the Russian-speaking Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkiv), Minister of Housing in the current Bennett government (after having slammed the door of Likud) and “facilitator” in the interviews between Russian political leaders and Israelis have “benefited from questionable Russian loans in 2018 during his failed campaign to win the mayoralty of Jerusalem”.
Similarly, Gideon Saar, another Likud dissident and current Minister of Justice in the Bennett government, “benefited from problematic donations during the legislative elections of 2008 and 2012”.
Finally, Avigdor Lieberman (a far-right Russian speaker born Evett Lvovitch Lieberman in the Moldovan capital Chisinau), now Minister of… Finance, “owes part of his Israel Beitenou party’s war chest to the huge financial contribution of a lesser-known Jewish oligarch, Michael Cherney”.