Peres pulls out of bank deal after media backlash
Ex-president was to get $30,000 per month from Bank Hapoalim; money would have gone to charity, but he canceled to safeguard his ‘good name’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
Former president Shimon Peres canceled a deal to represent Bank Hapoalim as a lobbyist, a few days after he agreed to receiving $30,000 per month to advance the bank’s interests, particularly abroad.
Peres told Channel 2 News on Thursday that the bank “naturally felt hurt” by the cancellation of the agreement, “but I told them — I don’t have a bank, I have a name, and my good name is the only bank that I have.”
He said he had not stood personally to make any money from the arrangement in the first place, and that it had been misrepresented in the media. “I [would not have been] taking a penny from this money; it all goes to investment in science, in social needs,” the former president said.
“What we agreed to had nothing to do with what was published,” Peres told the TV station, “Bank Hapoalim turned to me and said they had a branch in the US and they wanted to bring more investors to Israel, and that I should be the one to help them do it in the US, with no connection to what happens in the bank in Israel. I said yes,” he said.
“Then I read a story in the papers with no relation to reality, so I’m not even going to argue. I decided: it is at any rate a public matter for me and not a financial matter. And since it is important for me to maintain the public’s trust, I’m canceling it and that’ll be the end of that,” the former president said.
He stressed that he did not believe he had been in the wrong, but still decided to cancel the deal “in order to prevent an appearance” of exploiting his position “and to prevent badmouthing.”
“I want this to be clear,” Peres said, “I’ve conducted myself in this manner all my life and I won’t let anyone spoil it by publishing a wrong story.”
On Monday, The Marker published a piece saying Peres had recently signed the $30,000 contract with the bank. According to the report, the move to improve Hapoalim’s image abroad could also help Israel’s largest lender prepare to battle local legislation aimed at increasing competition in the banking sector — legislation that finance-minister-to-be Moshe Kahlon is expected to push in the coming Knesset.
Citing sources close to Peres, the report said all of the former president’s payments would be donated to charities or social justice projects and that his promotion of the bank abroad would advance dialogue, peace and Israel as a “start-up nation.”
Peres’s lawyer emphasized that the contract was only for the promotion of the bank’s overseas business and said it did not include any lobbying or legislative initiatives relating to Bank Hapoalim within Israel.
The Times of Israel Community.