Prime Minister Ehud Olmert failed to persuade Office of the State Comptroller investigators that he did not buy an apartment on Cremieux Street in Jerusalem from contractor Alumot at a discount. State Comptroller representatives questioned Olmert about the deal yesterday afternoon. As a result, State Comptroller and Ombudsman Micha Lindenstrauss is likely to open a criminal investigation against Olmert on suspicion of receiving benefits.
The State Comptroller team, headed by retired Israel Police Maj.-Gen. Ya'akov Borovski questioned Olmert at his residence, and asked about the apartment on Cremieux Street in Jerusalem's fashionable German Colony district.
Borovski is due to meet Lindenstrauss tomorrow to update him on the meeting with Olmert.
Olmert allegedly bought the apartment at a huge discount amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hebrew-language news website News First Class (NFC), owned by journalist Yoav Yitzhak, broke the story. According to Yitzhak, Olmert bought the garden apartment from contractor Alumot at an extraordinary discount of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is alleged that, in exchange, Olmert's associates helped Alumot, which renovated the building, to obtain exceptional permits from the Jerusalem municipality engineering administration to extend the building substantially, adding two extra apartments. The permits to gut the building and reconstruct it were required because it was listed for preservation.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 26, 2006
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