Israeli businessman says he moved cash from Qatari lobbyist to PM’s aide Feldstein
Kan public broadcaster shares audio in which Gil Birger, owner of Israeli holding company, reports transferring money from Qatar-employed US lobbyist Jay Footlik
An Israeli businessman based in the Gulf said that he transferred money from a Qatar-employed US lobbyist to a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to recordings aired Wednesday by the Kan public broadcaster.
In the recordings, businessman Gil Birger says he was approached by lobbyist Jay Footlik to give the money to the aide, Eli Feldstein, explaining that he was asked to make the payment for tax reasons.
Birger, via a private company, paid Feldstein while the latter was working as Netanyahu’s spokesman, according to Kan; Channel 13 also reported on the transfer mechanism on Tuesday night, prior to Kan’s broadcast of the recordings.
“He asked me to help due to VAT issues,” Birger is heard saying in the clips, referring to Israel’s value-added tax. “I have known him [Footlik] for 25 years. I don’t work with this, and I don’t work in Israel. He worked with [Feldstein] for a few months; he employed him, not me.”
“I have agreements with Jay on a lot of issues,” Birger added.
Kan noted in its report that, for at least part of Feldstein’s time working for Netanyahu, the aide did not receive any direct salary from the Prime Minister’s Office because he had not passed a security clearance.
Unnamed sources close to Birger and his holding company, cited by Channel 13, claimed that the payments were transferred to Feldstein without the businessman’s knowledge that Feldstein was working in the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the recording, Birger also claims the service performed by Feldstein was related to the hostages. Qatar has been a key mediator between Israel and Hamas.
The recordings were released despite a sweeping court-issued gag order on the investigation.
Lawyers for Feldstein told Kan that the publication of the recordings proved that their client is innocent.
“Since a blanket gag was issued on all details of the investigation that was dubbed Qatargate — and Kan would not have violated the order — it is clear that Feldstein is not a suspect in the affair, and for good reason,” the lawyers said in a statement.
“As claimed from the moment the allegations were first raised, Feldstein never worked for Qatar, never passed information to Qatar, and never received money from Qatar,” the statement read. “Feldstein worked for the Prime Minister’s Office and all of his activity on political and security issues was done solely in the name of, and for, the prime minister.”
According to Channel 12, Feldstein’s lawyers further said that the money Feldstein received from Birger was for services he provided “for the Prime Minister’s Office, and not for Qatar.” They claimed that the payments to their client were a “temporary and partial solution by people in the Prime Minister’s Office,” to an “issue that arose regarding his salary,” but did not specify what the issue was that necessitated payment of Feldstein’s government salary from sources outside the government.
The Channel 12 report also added that the statements from Feldstein’s legal team suggested that the idea to pay Feldstein through the Doha-funded PR firm was initiated by top Netanyahu aide Jonatan Urich, and that their client had no knowledge of the connection between the payments and Qatar. “In other words,” said Channel 12, “Feldstein’s representatives are today shifting the blame to the Prime Minister’s Office, and according to that argument, the Qataris, via American lobbyist Jay Footlik, financed the employment of a military spokesman of the prime minister of Israel during wartime.”
Responding to the mention of his name, lawyers for Urich denied his involvement in the affair and claimed that their client “has no idea who Gil Birger is.”
“Urich is a private consultant who is not a civil servant and is not employed by the Prime Minister’s Office,” his lawyers said, “and in any case he is not in charge of or responsible for employment or human resources matters in the office, so he does not deal with salaries or transfer money to anyone.”
“This is a false and fabricated affair,” Urich’s lawyers asserted, adding that the investigation’s “motives are transparent and known to all.”
Also responding to the Kan recordings, the Prime Minister’s Office said that the report is “more fake news,” and claimed that the PMO “does not ‘arrange’ payments to anyone. Every payment in a government office is made in accordance with the provisions of the law and through authorized entities only. Any other claim is baseless, aimed at breathing life into yet another fabricated affair.”
The probe was launched following revelations that Feldstein — Netanyahu’s former spokesman, who has been charged with harming national security in a case involving the theft and leaking of classified IDF documents — worked for Qatar via an international firm contracted by Doha to feed Israeli journalists pro-Qatar stories, while he was employed in the PMO.
The Walla news site reported Wednesday that Feldstein discussed the transfer of a sensitive IDF document to the German daily, Bild, with Netanyahu at least twice.
Prosecutors have accused Feldstein of leaking the document in a bid to sway public opinion, which had turned against Netanyahu after the murder in captivity of six Israeli hostages — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov and Carmel Gat — in late August.
In November, it was also reported that Urich and fellow Netanyahu aide Yisrael Einhorn did public relations work for Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup there. The three are said to be the central suspects in the national security case in which Feldstein was charged in November. All deny wrongdoing, as has Netanyahu’s office.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in late February ordered the opening of the “Qatargate” investigation, which is being conducted by the police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit together with the Shin Bet security agency.
When Netanyahu announced over the weekend his intention to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, opposition and civil society leaders accused the prime minister of doing so in order to thwart the investigation. Netanyahu countered with the claim that the investigation was launched as a means to protect Bar.
A Channel 13 report earlier this month claimed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were funneled from Qatar to various Netanyahu aides, via various intermediaries, including one owned by Urich, who denied being employed by Qatar. Investigators were reportedly surprised by how much money had been transferred.
The Times of Israel Community.