Lapid said to secretly meet with Netanyahu’s big dollar backer

Finance Minister Yair Lapid recently met with billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest foreign backers, in a meeting that was never officially publicized and the nature of which was unknown.

The meeting took place on a Saturday in April at Adelson’s penthouse apartment in Tel Aviv and lasted for over two hours, Al-Monitor reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the meeting was attended by both men’s wives.

Adelson, a casino magnate worth $26.5 billion according to Forbes, is a known political player in both Israeli and US politics.

A long-time supporter of Netanyahu, he also threw his considerable financial weight behind Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign to become president and reportedly said he was willing to spend up to $100 million to prevent President Barack Obama’s re-election.

It is not know what he discussed with Lapid, who has openly expressed interest in one day becoming prime minister. Lapid’s office refused to comment on the meeting, Al Monitor reported.

MK Merav Michaeli (Labor) questioned the morality of the finance minister’s meeting with a rich man at a time, she said, he should be concerned about the welfare of average citizen.

“He didn’t explain why instead of working on behalf of the middle class and the working man, it was more important for him to meet with the nobleman and in particular why the finance minister of the State of Israel made a pilgrimage to the nobleman’s house,” she wrote on Facebook.

Adelson is also the publisher of Israel’s widest-read newspaper, the free Israel Hayom daily, which many say takes a pro-Netanyahu line.

For many years Lapid was a top columnist for arch-rival Yedioth Ahronoth and in the run-up to the Israeli elections of January 2013 the Israel Hayom paper lambasted Lapid’s campaign while lauding Netanyahu’s attributes. Lapid fired back by criticizing the close relationship between Israel Hayom’s owner and election front-runner Netanyahu.

Michaeli noted that Lapid, who once referred to Israel Hayom as “Netanyahu’s bulletin,” has recently become similarly praised in its pages.

“It is now Lapid’s bulletin,” she wrote.

In the wake of Lapid’s surprise election success — which put him at the helm of the second-largest party in the Knesset — and as coalition talks dragged on, Lapid said that he could replace the prime minister “within 18 months.”

Polls at the time also suggested that a new round of elections would see the Lapid’s Yesh Atid party become the largest Knesset faction.