The police will question senior officials at the Weizmann Institute of Science in connection with the several million dollars in financial irregularities revealed at the Association of Friends of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Europe, registered in Switzerland. Former Finance Division head Michael Netzer, suspected of embezzling $5 million, confessed under questioning, saying, “I'm addicted to gambling.”
The investigation, under the supervision of police central district fraud squad Superintendent Yaffa Golan, is concentrating on Netzer’s actions for now. Netzer recently resigned from the Weizmann Institute after the irregularities were discovered.
Police sources say the investigation has discovered that the Weizmann Institute and the Association of Friends failed to supervise millions of dollars in donations in the association’s accounts, which were supposed to fund the Institute’s research.
Netzer admitted that he embezzled the association’s money, and said no one was suspicious of him. Between 1995 and November 2000, Netzer systematically withdrew large sums of money from the Association’s account at the Bank Leumi branch in Zurich.
In the wake of the revelation of the affair, Weizmann Institute’s administration claimed yesterday that a major part of the money embezzled from the account had already been returned. The police investigation, on the other hand, showed that most of the money had been lost.
Police sources said that Netzer admitted he gambled away all of the money. The investigation discovered that the money was transferred to an account in Germany for financing the GSI Institute, which is involved in a joint research project with the Weizmann Institute.
The investigators are now waiting for documents from overseas banks in order to examine the transfers between various banks. Police sources expressed astonishment at the ease by which the former head of finances at the Weizmann Institute of Science was able to embezzle $5 million.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 25 July 2001