Documents obtained by Mediapart and Israeli daily Haaretz reveal further connections between French businessman Arnaud Mimran, who last month stood trial for his part in a massive carbon trading scandal, and the entourage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mimran, who faces sentencing next month, is suspected of being one of the organizers of a carbon quota scam that netted he and his fellow defendants 283 million euros. At his trial, the public prosecutor demanded Mimram be sentenced to ten years in prison.
A European Union emissions trading system (ETS) was introduced in 2005 using the 'cap and trade' principle to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But in the early years the system was exploited by criminals who made billions of euros from VAT fraud. They registered to be able to trade carbon permits in the ETS and then started buying carbon permits in one EU country from another, free of VAT, before selling them on with the VAT added. But instead of passing that VAT on to the relevant tax authority, they vanished without trace – taking the VAT money with them.
The French businessman is also placed under investigation in a probe into the kidnapping of a Swiss financier in 2015 in a bid to extort 2.2 million dollars. The 44-year-old’s name has also been cited in connection with several unsolved murders, including that of his former father-in-law, although he has not until now been officially implicated by the investigation into the killings.
Since the first revelations by Mediaparet and Haaretz about the links between Mimran and Netanyahu, published in March, the Israeli prime minister has changed his account of their relationship on three separate occasions. After first insisting that he had little to do with Mimran - despite Mediapart’s publication of a photo of the pair relaxing in Monaco together in 2003 – he later denied having any financial relationship with the Frenchman.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Then, on April 14th, 2016, a joint investigation between Mediapart and Haaretz revealed the existence of a document drawn up by Netanyahu in July 2002 in which he detailed, country by country, the list of wealthy individuals who had given him financial backing. Among French contributors was the name “Arnaud”, listing the latter’s mobile phone number as 06 11 33 XX XX (last four figures withheld here). Mediapart and Haaretz established that the mobile phone belonged to Arnaud Mimram, as confirmed by a January 2003 phone bill and a family phone directory.
One hour after that report was published, on April 14th, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued a new statement which finally recognised the financial links between Netanyahu and Mimran. “Mr Netanyahu was not aware of any criminal or illegal activities by the Mimrans when he was in contact with them, as a private citizen, in the early 2000s,” it said. “They were then respected members of the Jewish community supporting Israel in France. After verification of the facts dating from more than 15 years ago, it appears that Arnaud Mimran contributed to the financing of Mr Netanyahu’s public activity during this period, when Mr Netanyahu had no official function. This activity included conferences and foreign tours to explain the Israeli positions, and has always respected the applicable laws on the matter.”
During his trial last month, Mimran claimed that he had given Netanyahu 1 million euros, allegedly in 2009, during the latter’s re-election campaign. That prompted a statement from Netanyahu’s office on June 6th: "The claim that Arnaud Mimran donated a million euros to Mr. Netanyahu's election campaign is a baseless lie," the statement said. “In August of 2001, when Mr. Netanyahu was a private citizen, Mimran donated 40,000 dollars to a fund for public activities by Mr. Netanyahu, which included media appearances and numerous public diplomacy travels for the benefit of the state of Israel, and was done in accordance with the law.”
Mimran then told Israeli TV channel Arutz 10 that the sum was 170,000 euros, before telling another TV channel that the sum could have been 40,000 dollars after all, as claimed by Netanyahu. "Everything that Bibi is saying is true," he said, using the Netanyahu’s nickname. "In any case, Bibi didn't do anything illegal."
Further information is now emerging on Mimran’s links with Netanyahu’s close entourage. In 2006, Mimran created a company in Israel called Track Performance Ltd, whose only director is himself. Documents from the Israeli company registers show that 25% of the company’s capital is held by French centre-right Member of Parliament (MP) Meyer Habib. The MP is both a friend of Mimran’s and a close friend of Netanyahu’s, for whom he serves as personal representative in France.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The legal structure of Track Performance Ltd, whose activities are listed as “taking part in all legal activity”, was created by the practice of a lawyer called David Shimron, a longserving counsel and confidant of Netanyahu’s. The head office address of Track Performance Ltd is registered as being that of Shimron’s practice. Questioned about the company and its links to his practice, Shimron said: “It is possible that a former partner of our practice supplied legal services to Mimran.” But he insisted: “That has nothing to do with Mr. Netanyahu.”
Another shareholder in the company is Pierre Denain, who holds a 10% stake. Also a friend of Mimran’s, Denain was questioned in connection with the carbon trading scam. The French customs service found that, on January 9th 2009, Denain sent from his HSBC bank account in the United States the sum of 350,000 dollars, paid into an account with the Safra Bank. According to several French judicial documents, that sum was immediately invested by Mimran in the carbon trade fraud. Denain, who was not prosecuted in connection with the scam, insisted under questioning that he had sent Mimran the money by friendship “to help out”, without any contract or other guarantee.
Invited by Mediapart on several occasions to comment on the events, Denain did not return our calls.
An intimate clan
Mimran’s former wife, Anna Dray, whose father Claude was murdered in mysterious conditions in October 2011 at his high-security villa in the upmarket Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, is also listed as one of the shareholders of Track Performance Ltd, with a 10% stake.
But, contacted by Mediapart, she said she had no connection with the company. “This is very serious,” Dray said. “I never signed anything. I don’t know anything about this company. ” Dray said she was now considering taking legal action in Israel to find out how her name appeared on the company papers, which include her address as being in Chile. “It’s very simple, I have never set foot there,” she said.
Also contacted by Mediapart, French MP Meyer Habib said Mimran “wanted to include me in the company because I know Israel well”. He added: “But to my knowledge, this company never had the least activity, never had the least turnover, never had a bank account and, in all certainty, never brought me the least centime.”
Track Performance Ltd has filed no annual activity report since 2009, and is in arrears on its annual tax payments. With no activity, no income and no dividend payments, it appears an intriguing mystery as to why the company was ever set up.
“Arnaud Mimran, who was, as you know, a friend, comes from a very honorable family of which [his] father was given an honour by the budget minister [Jean-François Copé] in person at the finance ministry,” said Meyer Habib. The honour in question was the legion d’honneur, the highest civil award for merit.
However, Habib omitted to mention that Jacques Mimran, father of Arnaud and a former deputy director general of the VINCI concessions and construction company, was convicted in 2002 by a court in Créteil, south-east of Paris, in a major corruption case known in France as the 'TGV Nord affair'. This involved bribes and fraudulent billing during the building of the high-speed TGV railway tracks linking Paris to the Belgium border. Of the 20 people who stood trial, Jacques Mimran received the heaviest sentence, a three-year suspended jail term and a 200,000-euro fine. The prosecutor at the trial had in fact recommended that Jacques Mimran be given a jail sentence. At the time, Mimran was boss of a firm called Deschiron, later taken over by VINCI. The case led to Mimran being stripped of the Légion d’honneur in 2009.
Meyer Habib has been close to Arnaud Mimran for several years. But he is also a longstanding friend and associate of Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom he acts as a personal ‘ambassador’ in France. As illustrated in the video below, Netanyahu lent public support to Habib’s campaign to become an MP in a 2013 bye-election which Habib, standing for the centre-right UDI party, won.
Above: Benjamin Netanyahu in an election campaign video in support of Meyer Habib.
Habib, who is the head of jewellery company Groupe Vendôme, is a generous donator to Netanyahu. In a notebook listing his financial backers and revealed by Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker in 2011, Habib’s name features alongside that of arnaud Mimran. According to Israeli press reports, Habib’s company Groupe Vendôme paid for travel and accommodation costs during visits to France by Netanyahu and his family. Habib has denied the reports.
Mimran himself has spoken of being present with Habib and Netanyahu to celebrate the latter’s election as Israeli prime minister in 2009, which the neither Habib nor Netanyahu have denied. According to several sources contacted by Mediapart, Mimran and Netanyahu were again together in Jerusalem in 2010 to celebrate the bar mitzvah of Habib’s son. Habib declined to answer Mediapart’s questions about the event.
The Mimran affair, which is increasingly making headlines in the Israeli press, has become a major embarrassment for Netanyahu. During his visit to Russia last week, Netanyahu was questioned about his relationship with Mimran at a press conference in Moscow on June 7th. The Israeli prime minister said he was the victim of “systematic political persecution” and “false accusations” and that, concerning the media coverage of Mimran’s claim that he gave Netanyahu 1 million euros, “they made a mountain out of a molehill”.
“A million Euros for an election campaign in 2009?” said Netanyahu. “It’s not a million euros, not an election campaign, and it wasn’t in 2009. It was a legal and supervised donation to a foundation I established for the benefit of the State of Israel. [...]It is obvious that this is part of a systematic political persecution – what they were unable to do at the ballot boxes they are trying to do with false accusations and huge media inflation.”
A preliminary investigation into the claims and counter claims over Mimran’s financing of Netanyahu has now been launched by Israeli prosecutor general Avichai Mandelblit.
-------------------------
- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse