Legal sources estimate that State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss is likely to find that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received illicit benefits in the affair of the apartment on Karmia Street in Jerusalem. The comptroller will have to decide soon whether to summon Olmert to a meeting at which he will be required to furnish explanations. Lindenstrauss may instead publish a report without meeting Olmert.
The State Comptroller's Office said that "the examination has not yet finished." The Prime Ministers' Bureau said that neither the State Comptroller nor anyone on his behalf had approached Olmert on the matter, and that "if there is anything to respond to, we will respond."
Journalist Yoav Yitzhak exposed the Karmia Street apartment affair on his nfc.co.il website. 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 Engineering Administration at the Jerusalem Municipality 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.
Yitzhak's investigation found that Olmert and his wife bought a garden apartment at number 8, Karmia Street in Jerusalem's German Colony district for $1.2 million, and that the benefit to Olmert amounted to some $320,000.
Yitzhak recently published figures indicating the apparent benefit to Olmert in his purchase of the apartment. Among other things, Yitzhak states that Olmert paid $3,300 per square meter for the apartment, while Alumot offered another apartment in the same building to a different buyer for about $7,000 per square meter.
Alumot said at the time that the price the Olmerts paid for the apartment was reasonable taking all the circumstances of the purchase into account.
Another real estate affair in which Olmert was involved, over the rented house in which Olmert currently resides, was also investigated by the State Comptroller. It was claimed that Olmert sold his house to US tycoon Daniel Abrams, whose name was linked to contributions to primary election candidates, at a particularly high price. It was also claimed that the rent Olmert paid Abrams for continuing to reside in the house was low. A special State Comptroller's report on this affair found that both the purchase price for the house and the rent were reasonable.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 17, 2006