Israeli businessmen condemned in Georgia

The Tbilisi City Court has passed  in the Fuchs and Frenkiel case, as it is called in Israel, comparing it to the most famous anti-Semitic cases of the 20th century.  Ron Fuchs was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment and  Ze'ev  Frenkiel  to 6.5. Moreover, the court fined the businessmen – Frenkiel will have to pay about $29,000 and Fuchs $ 295,000 to the budget of Georgia.  The court considered that it had been proven that the Israeli businessmen tried to bribe the Georgian deputy minister of finance, and all the ruling party leadership via him. The businessmen sought to achieve timely payment of $100 million, due to them as a penalty, in accordance with a decision by international arbitration. The London-based investment arbitration organisation considered the decision to break the contract with Fuchs' company, Tramex, over gas and oil pipeline management in Georgia, made by the Shevardnadze administration 15 years ago. Although the businessmen didn’t invest a cent in the Georgian infrastructure, the arbitration ruling obliged Tbilisi to pay to them this huge sum as a penalty. The entire Georgian budget amounts to $4 billion. The Georgian government could find a way to appeal against the verdict, or to drag out its execution. It was for this reason that the businessmen decided to offer $7 million to the deputy minister of finance, Avtandilu Haraidze, and promised to transfer $12 million more to the account of the pro-presidential National Movement Party. Having received  information from Haraidze, the Georgian special services designed a sting operation. Prime Minister Nika Gilauri participated in the implementation: he invited Fuchs and Frenkiel to come to Batumi, allegedly for negotiating a re-structuring of the debt, which emerged after the arbitration decision. According to the lawyers of the condemned men, Gilauri invited the businessmen in order to trap, arrest and offer them a «procedural agreement» - freedom for $100 million. The tribunal of inquiry has video-recordings made by a concealed camera of the negotiations of Fuchs and Frenkiel, in which they offer Haraidze money. However, a well-known lawyer Archil Kbilashvili, representing the interests of the Israelis, claims that  it was not a question of a "kickback", but of «return investments» into the Georgian economy. However, the opponents of this version say that Fuchs, for some unknown reason, promised to transfer "investments" to the personal account of Haraidze and told the young man with a haughty smile and indulgently: « You can't imagine how great this sum is – you can live all your life on it with nothing to care about». The process hasn’t merely complicated Georgian-Israeli relations, which were considered strategic until recently – it reduced them virtually to zero. Israel has closed its embassy in Tbilisi, using the pretext of the struggle with terrorism, and cancelled the visits of the the Georgian Parliamentary Speaker and Minister of Economy to Tel-Aviv. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, sent a categorical letter to Grigory Vashadze, containing a demand to release Fuchs and Frenkiel immediately, threatening them with complications on the international investment markets.  The Georgian authorities are not afraid of his threats. After a telephone conversation with Shimon Peres, Saakashvili told journalists that Georgia will continue its tough struggle with corruption, despite the pressure. According to reliable data, the public prosecutor’s office offered the condemned men to pay 100 million shekels for their release. However, the fate of the $100 million is still unknown. Georgy Kalatozishvili. Exclusively to VK