The indictment reveals Benny Steinmetz’s bribe path

For 11 days, the three judges in the first instance (equivalent to the Israeli Magistrate’s Court) will hear witnesses, present evidence and at the end will decide the case of Steinmetz and the other two defendants – Steinmetz’s former partner, Frederick Silins, who was already in a US prison after plea bargaining. “B, and Sandra Marloni Hormans, a former senior member of Steinmetz’s BSGR mining group. If Steinmetz is convicted, prison sentences can range from two to 10 years in Switzerland, depending on the number of offenses.

“Steinmetz has promised, since 2005, and has been transferring favors to Guinea President Nassana Conte and his widow, his fourth wife, Mamadie Touré since 2006, to allow his girlfriend BSGR to mine in the Simendau area of ​​Guinea,” the 36-page indictment alleges. Filed by the prosecution in Geneva.

“Steinmetz has transferred bribes amounting to more than $ 10 million to Madi Tora since 2006,” it was further alleged. “In return for the bribe, BSGR received permission to conduct and mine mines in the Simendaau area between 2006 and 2010. This is at the expense of rival Rio Tinto, whose rights in the mines were stolen in 2008.”

The list of 11 witnesses summoned for the first week of the trial includes, in addition to the main prosecution witness Tora, who signed a settlement in the past with the authorities in Switzerland and the United States, and close associates such as Abdullah Sisa, Tora’s husband after Conte’s death, also a number of Israelis. , A former senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office who served as CEO of BSGR, and Avi Lev Ran and Michael Noy – Silins’ partners in Pantler, the bribe pipe to Tora according to the indictment.

Another Israeli who was summoned to testify in light of his involvement according to the Swiss indictment is the businessman and honorary consul of Ukraine in Israel, Ofer Krajner. According to journalists covering the trial in Switzerland, he is expected to testify. The indictment also mentions the involvement of communications and strategy consultant Tal Zilberstein, but his name does not appear on the witness list.

One can get dizzy from trying to follow in the Swiss indictment the list of companies and bank branches – in Zurich, Geneva, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Guinea-Concierge – through which money flowed from Steinmetz’s pocket to Tora’s pocket. This spin, as in any large money laundering case, is actually the heart of the method. Another anonymous company, another transfer, another bank – this is how the money is moved to another station and another station to keep it away from the bribe to the bribe. Which explains the many years it took the Swiss authorities to chart the full path of the funds.

Steinmetz and the other defendants, the Swiss prosecution alleges, used a ramified network of companies, straw men and fabricated documents to present to the banks completely fictitious transactions, in order to approve the money transfers. The methods have become more sophisticated over the years. District consulting, through real estate transactions and renting Steinmetz’s luxury yacht Meamina, to the old and often the most effective method that leaves no trace – payment in cash in envelopes, according to the Swiss.

The tangle of activity can be divided into two according to the claim. The first stage is a series of agreements and understandings between Steinmetz’s partners in Guinea – Silins, Lev Ran, Noy – with Tora or her associates. For this purpose, the Swiss indictment alleges that Steinmetz prepared an infrastructure for the activity. A company called Pantler, whose name runs like the second thread in an indictment, was in 2005 a partner of BSGR. In 2006 she was transferred without consideration to Silins, Noy and Lev Ran. The three allegedly turned her into an independent mining consulting firm that contracted with Tora, the president’s wife, on various contracts in which she was paid millions of dollars.

But it was Steinmetz, who lived in Arsuf, who was behind the money transferred to Tora, according to the indictment. Two years after the three received Pantler for free (2008), Steinmetz signed a contract between them that he buys it back for an almost imaginary amount compared to the value of the shares when they received them – $ 34 million.

It’s not all. According to the indictment, the Swiss authorities found documentation for about $ 8.6 million that was used as bribes, but according to additional testimonies and evidence, there were also cash payments to Tora amounting to about $ 2.2 million. This is how the indictment describes the $ 200,000 that was transferred in cash in 2006 in Guinea to Tora through an associate who met with Steinmetz; $ 1 million in cash in 2008 that he transferred to a source close to Tora Asher Avidan at the BSGR offices in Guinea-Conakry; $ 50,000 received in cash by a BSGR employee in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and sent by Asher Avidan. And an additional $ 998,000 that Tora received in cash in 2010 at Freetown.

According to the Swiss indictment, between 2009 and 2011, Israeli businessman Ofer Krajner and BSGR employee Sandra Marloni Hormans also entered the picture. Krajner served as a new straw man for Steinmetz, according to the indictment. He was registered as a shareholder in a company called Leicester Invest Group, the person behind it was Steinmetz. But the prosecution claims that Krasner was not a shareholder, and this was done to deceive the American and Romanian authorities and the banks in Switzerland. That is to create a show that is the controlling owner of Blaster which owned plots in Romania.

The second stage was a fictitious land deal on the plots in Romania between a Steinmetz-related company, Treftali, and Lester, of which Krazner was registered as the controlling shareholder. This, according to the Swiss, is to hide the fact that the money that came to the company that Karzner registered as its fictitious owner, allegedly in exchange for the land deal in Romania, actually originated in Steinmetz, and that they are intended for bribe payments to Tora.

In the transaction, the company that Karzner registered as its owner from Steinmetz, received an account with Credit Suisse, 9 million euros. From there in a series of seemingly fictitious deals, including with companies controlled by Frederick Silins, the funds went to Tora. Thus, for example, according to the indictment, Krzner signed a fictitious consulting contract for jobs in South Africa with a Cilins company. He presented the contract to Swiss banks, for approval of a $ 1.5 million payment to Silins. After the money, which, as stated, originally came from Steinmetz, was transferred to Cilins, Krazner ordered him to pay it to Tora. That is, the money changed hands twice, creating two fictitious deals, to keep the bribe (Steinmetz) away from the bribe (Tora). This was not the only fictitious contract that Steinmetz and Krasner brewed according to the Swiss. Steinmetz presented to the banks a contract to lease his yacht to Karzner, in the amount of $ 510,000 in July 2011. “It was a false document,” the indictment alleges. “Krezner never rented the yacht. Here, too, the idea was to hide money that Krezner transferred to his creditors and to Madi Tora.”

Another Israeli whose name appears in the indictment in the context of money laundering, although as stated he is neither on the list of defendants nor on the list of witnesses, is the strategic adviser Tal Zilberstein. In March 2011, Krzner presented to the banks a document stating that Strategicom, owned by Zilberstein, provided consulting services to a company called Chaweng Global. In reality no services were provided, according to the indictment filed in Switzerland. All this was done, at Steinmetz’s request, to allow Krasner to justify to his Swiss bank a transfer of $ 750,000 to Zilberstein’s Strategicom. From there, in another contract and as already described in the indictment, the funds continued to Silins and from there to Tora.

On behalf of Benny Steinmetz, it was stated: “As he has already shown to courts and authorities around the world, Steinmetz will now also prove that his activity has not been flawless. Steinmetz is confident of his innocence and will appear before the court in Geneva. We examined the allegations for years and retracted them from the charges.

“From the moment the BSGR team won the tender for iron ore mining in Guinea, while winning large and connected international players, starting against the team and against Steinmetz an international defamation and defamation campaign. It so happened that for the same false mask, investigations and proceedings were opened all over the world. Between them and the invented affair. “

Such a meeting: Ofer Krajner and Benny Steinmetz

The name of former businessman and pilot Ofer Krezner, now the honorary consul of Ukraine in Israel, is known mainly to capital market activists and those who covered it during the 1990s. But in the last decade, Krzner has almost completely disappeared under the media radar in Israel. Most of his well-known business activity is in Ukraine, where he began operating towards the beginning of the 2000s. He owns, for example, shopping centers in central Kiev, as well as a business park near the city’s airport.

Evidence of the connection between Krajner and Benny Steinmetz, the depth of which was first revealed in the Swiss indictment, can be found in the gossip columns of the previous decade. In 2005, for example, it was reported that Steinmetz was one of the guests at a party held by Krasner at his vacation home in the marina in Herzliya. In 2011, it was noted that Steinmetz and Krasner were seen at a gathering of the world’s richest in Davos, as personal guests of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Employees of the real estate company Scorpio, which has raised millions of investors, and as far as is known is still controlled by Steinmetz, testify that Krzner is also present at many meetings of the company that dealt with real estate transactions. “This is a person I really appreciate and cherish,” said one of his close friends, businessman Ofer Nimrodi, about Krasner. Real estate agent Roni Mana also defines him as a close friend, as does businessman Teddy Sagi.

Krajner’s adventure in the Israeli capital market ended in disappointment. In 1992, he and his friend Yuval Ran issued bubble companies. These companies at the time of their establishment did not carry out any activity, and raised capital on the stock exchange in the cheerful 1990s in order to merge or make a purchase of another company.

Krzner set up two bubble companies of his own, Oak Doc Investments and Ace Spade, which he sold to Yuval Ran. Krzner then received loans from the credit lines of Ran, a company that specialized, among other things, in providing high-interest loans. Credit lines, it will be recalled, collapsed in 2010, and most of the money that Krasner borrowed, he did not repay. After a lengthy legal process, Krzner signed a financial settlement with a joint line of credit.

The stain of the credit line affair will accompany Krzner for many years to come. Perhaps because of this he tried to rebrand himself as “a businessman, a fighter pilot and first and foremost a philanthropist.” And as part of a campaign to clear his name, he became the Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Israel in 2013.

Ari Liebsker participated in the preparation of the article