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More on a recent defense related investor lawsuit Talansky was party to here:A Long Island mogul is at the center of a sensational bribery scandal that could bring down embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, The Post has learned.
Millionaire financier Morris Talansky - who runs an investment firm out of his tony home in Woodmere - allegedly passed money to Olmert while the politician was mayor of Jerusalem in the '90s, sources said.
In a highly unusual move, Israeli authorities have barred the country's media from publishing Talansky's name - revealed now in The Post - saying it could hamper their investigation. Israeli media has referred only to the involvement of an "American businessman."
Talansky is apparently set to sing to Israeli authorities about his alleged role in the scheme, sources said.
"It looks serious, and it looks like they have a state witness" in Talansky, one source said.
Talansky - a philanthropist and political contributor to everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Bill Clinton - is in Jerusalem, where he has an apartment, preparing to head to a closed-door court hearing as early as today, sources said.
The 75-year-old was earlier questioned about the alleged scheme almost immediately after arriving in the country for Passover, and he implicated Olmert, sources have said.
It was unclear what the alleged payments to Olmert were for, but sources said they involved hefty amounts of cash.
Talansky repeatedly appears - sometimes under the nickname "The Laundry Man" - in the logs of financial dealings kept by Olmert's longtime aide, Shula Zakan, a source said.
Olmert was grilled by investigators Friday. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. ...
More possibly related background.As the suit moves forward, it could disclose back-channel communications between Israel and America.
The nine investors who brought the suit are mostly American and Israeli, and many of them were founding partners of ImageSat. The Americans are Stephen M. Wilson, Michael Morris, Joel Levine, Morris Talansky and Abraham Moshel. The Israeli investors are Moshe Bar-Lev, Patrick Rosenbaum and Haim Yifrah. A Canadian, Albert Reichmann, is another investor listed.
They are suing for more than $6 billion in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan before Judge Laura Taylor Swain. Ira Matetsky of Ganfer & Shore filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs. An initial court date is set for October 12.
In essence, the suit shows a rift between the private investors and the government-run defense company, Israel Aerospace Industries. The investors wanted the satellite company to be profitable. The defense manufacturer wanted it be patriotic, the suit claims.
Stephen Wilson, an American investor and the lead plaintiff in the case, founded ImageSat in 1994. At the time, Israel and its defense manufacturer were "desperately seeking new sources of financing for the Israeli military space program," so they signed on to the idea and accepted the fact that the company would have to be apolitical, the suit says.
From the very beginning, ImageSat's political independence was a "fundamental, indeed essential, element of its business plan," the suit says.
The only limit imposed by the Israeli Ministry of Defense was that ImageSat could not sell satellites to any country within 1,550 miles of Israel, a radius that includes nations that have fought wars against Israel, such as Lebanon and Syria. Israel also forbade ImageSat from selling to "rogue states" as defined by America and Israel, consisting of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
At first, Israel lived up to its promise to keep its hands off ImageSat, according to the suit. In 1998, to prove that ImageSat would be allowed to function independently, the Israeli Ministry of Defense issued licenses allowing ImageSat to sell to 60 countries, including Venezuela in 1998.
The Ministry of Defense even refused a request by the American government to suspend ImageSat's business with India after that country tested a nuclear weapon in 1998, according to the suit.
But after 2000, Israel Aerospace Industries deserted its hands-off approach and began steering the company according to Israel's geopolitical interests, the suit says.
Venezuela provides the most blatant example of political meddling described in the suit. Mr. Wilson began pitching a deal to the Venezuelan government in 1999 and even moved to the country in 2001. By 2002, he had convinced Caracas to rent spy satellites from ImageSat for a price of $18 million or more a year, the suit says.