Documents drawn up by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in person confirm the close links existing between him and Arnaud Mimran, the principal suspect in the biggest fraud case in French history, a massive carbon trading scam which cost French taxpayers around 1.6 billion euros, according to a joint investigation by Mediapart and Israeli daily Haaretz.
French national Mimran, 44, is currently placed in preventive detention in France while awaiting his trial in May as the suspected organiser of the carbon trading fraud carried out between 2008 and 2009.
Since June 2015, he is also under investigation – a French legal status one step short of being charged – for his suspected role in the kidnapping of a Swiss financier in 2015 in a bid to extort 2.2 million dollars. His name is also cited in police investigations into four unsolved murders, including that of his former father-in-law, and which appear linked to the carbon trading scam (see Mediapart's investigation into Arnaud Mimran and his associates here).
Mimram denies any wrongdoing in all three cases.
Following Mediapart’s initial investigation into the links between the Mimran clan and Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s office told Haaretz in a statement last month that Netanyahu had never profited from any generosity on the part of Mimran.
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But in a document drawn up by Netanyahu in July 2002 detailing the list of wealthy individuals who gave financial backing to him, he noted, among French contributors, a certain “Arnaud”, listing the latter’s mobile phone number as 06 11 33 XX XX (last four figures withheld here). Mediapart and Haaretz have established that the mobile phone belonged to Arnaud Mimram, as illustrated by a January 2003 phone bill and a family phone directory.
One hour after this report was originally published in French, 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 Mimran’s 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.”
Contacted via his lawyer, Arnaud Mimran did not reply to our questions.
Netanyahu’s list of donators became the subject of lengthy press coverage in Israel after its existence was first revealed in 2011 by leading Israeli investigative journalist Raviv Drucker. It disclosed the powerful sponsors who funded Netanyahu’s exorbitant lifestyle between 1999 and 2002, including first-class travel, luxury holidays, domestic staff and limousines during a period when Netanyahu says he was a “private citizen”.
Prime minister between 1996 and 1999, “Bibi” as Netanyahu is widely nicknamed, re-entered government in 2002, first as foreign affairs minister and then finance minister. In 2009 he became prime minister for a second time. According to Israeli press reports, Netanyahu continued to receive financial backing from wealthy donators after 2002.
The disclosure of the list of donators, contained in a simple Word document, provoked widespread controversy in Israel. Beside the names of some of those listed were unequivocal comments such as “very rich, our relations not good enough, I must work on this” or “very rich friend, hasn’t given me money directly but he helps me a lot”. The document’s contents and some of its annexes lifted the lid on his lavish lifestyle and, above all, the wealthy allies who financed him.
Among the most important backers recognised by Netanyahu himself is French Member of Parliament for the centre-right UDI party, Meyer Habib, who holds dual French and Israeli nationality and who is a close friend of Arnaud Mimran. Netanyahu describes Habib as his personal representative in France. Habib, meanwhile, has described Bibi as “a brother”.
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Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker’s investigation in 2011 detailed how Habib looked after visits made to France by Netanyahu and his family. One of these was a trip at Christmas time in 1999 when, Drucker reported, Netanyahu and his family’s stay was paid by Habib. Drucker reported that one year later, in October 2000, another stay in Paris by Netanyahu and his family was paid for by the Group Vendôme, a jewellery firm owned by Habib, at a cost of 5,000 US dollars.
Drucker’s investigation, which went unreported in France, was particularly damaging for Netanyahu. Beyond the issue of his financial backers, it also detailed the favours the Netanyahu family demanded of their French hosts. These included the provision of two separate beds and, in the children’s room, a camp bed for their nanny, DVD players, non-skid mats in the bathrooms, an orange juice press machine with filter, and the daily change of bed linen and towels. The demands were set out in writing.
Contacted by Mediapart, Meyer Habib said he had no comment to make on the subject of Arnaud Mimran, and insisted that his jewellery company “never gave the slightest centime neither to Benjamin Netanyahu nor to any political figure”.
“Every donation that I was led to make on a personal level in my existence were made in all transparency and in the pure respect of the law,” he added. “I have no recollection of a donation made to my friend Benjamin Netanyahu.” Meyer Habib also denounced a “media manipulation” by the Israeli press. However, the investigation by Drucker five years ago has never been legally challenged by Habib.
'When Netanyahu was in Paris, he stayed at my home'
The fact that Arnaud Mimran was named in Netanyahu’s list of contacts as simply “Arnaud” -the only individual in France who is not identified by his full name – illustrates the intimacy between the two men.
In France, Mimran’s activities are the subject of investigations led by several police services, the customs, examining magistrates and public prosecutor’s offices. In the year 2000, he was the subject of an investigation in the US for suspected insider trading which led to him and his partners agreeing to a fine of 1.2 million dollars. In 2002, an investigation in France led to his conviction for tax fraud, made definitive in 2007 after he appealed the first judgment.
It was in 2008 and 2009 that occurred what represents the largest known fraud case in France, that of the carbon trading scam. The European Union's 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. Criminals 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.
According to the French national audit court, the Cour des Comptes, the 2008-2009 scam cost the French taxpayer at least 1.7 billion euros. Officials close to the case questioned by Mediapart estimate that the real cost to public finances was closer to between 2 billion and 3 billion euros. In May, Mimran will appear before a Paris court as the principal defendant in one chapter of the fraud involving a hidden 300 million euros.
In several official documents to which Mediapart has gained access, the magistrates in charge of the carbon trading scam describe Mimran as well-versed in the techniques of money laundering. These include the use of bank accounts registered in the name of third parties, the use of accounts opened in casinos to recover cash sums after conversion of chips, false ‘loans’ of chips between casino players, and undeclared international transfers of cash and cheques. According to the French investigators, it is the carbon trading fraud that, beyond all others, provided Mimran with his immense wealth, funding a lifestyle that centred around luxury hotels, high-end cars, private jets and offshore accounts.
Meanwhile, Mimran has also been placed under investigation (which requires serious or concordant evidence of criminal behaviour) for “kidnapping and sequestration”, “extortion”, “criminal association” and “money laundering” in the case of the kidnapping of a wealthy Swiss financier in France in 2015, when Mimran allegedly tried to extort 2.2 million dollars from him.
A police report in the case, dated February 3rd 2015, is scathing of Mimran. “Arnaud Mimran is very unfavourably known to police and justice services for his role in wide-scale frauds in what is called “carbon tax”, and also in two cases of assassinations committed over recent years in his environment,” it reads.
The murders cited in the report are those of Samy Souied, a former partner of Mimran’s in the carbon trading activities, who was shot dead at the Porte Maillot in Paris in 2010, and that of Mimran’s father-in-law Claude Dray, who was found shot dead inside his home in the plush Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 2011.
No-one has until now been placed under investigation in any of the four murders, and Mimran denies any involvement.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s name is cited during questioning of Mimran by an examining magistrate leading the investigation into the kidnapping of the Swiss financier. Mimran was asked about his activities, between two spells of preventive detention, as the marketing director of the Ken Club, an upmarket sports, leisure and bodycare centre situated in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. In his statement, Mimram answered: “I brought a large number of well-known men to the club, like Mr Netanyahu, who became members or not, and so that increased the reputation of the club.”
The magistrate then asked: “Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister?”
“Yes, that’s it,” replied Mimran.
“And he comes to the club?” asked the magistrate.
“For him, he was a former prime minister but also a future prime minister. He came to France during this interval, and sometimes we left together for holidays in the south of France. When he was in Paris, he stayed at my home,” answered Mimran.
What Mimran said was true. He and Netanyahu holidayed together in Monaco in 2003, as illustrated by a photo published by Mediapart (see page 1). The two men also stayed, with their families, at the Alpine ski resort of Courchevel paid for on at least one occasion by Mimran, according to concordant information given by several sources. Netanyahu was also given free accommodation in Paris at Mimran’s home and that of his parents.
Mimran’s father Jacques, 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 false billing surrounding 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, who spoke about the “moral abuse” highlighted by the case, had in fact recommended that Mimran be sent to prison. At the time Mimran was boss of a firm called Deschiron, later taken over by VINCI.
Astonishingly, his conviction did not prevent Jacques Mimran from being awarded the Légion d'honneur in July 2006. It was given to him in person by the then-budget minister Jean-François Copé, a member of the conservative government of President Jacques Chirac. According to the authorities who oversee the awarding of this honour, the Grande Chancellerie de la Légion d’honneur, Mimran's conviction did not appear in the file used to determine his eligibility. It apparently only came to light seven years later, leading to a disciplinary procedure and a decree on May 19th, 2009, formally stripping Jacques Mimran of the honour.
“Jacques Mimran received the Légion d’honneur from a French minister in 2006, whereas French law prohibits the awarding of this distinction to convicted persons,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement. “If the French government knew nothing of the criminal activities of Mr Mimran, Mr Netanyahu could not have known more, and he did in fact know nothing of this.”
At the end of March, following Mediapart’s initial investigation into the links between Netanyahu and Mimran, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued a categorical denial of our revelations. “The innuendos in this report are false and ridiculous,” it said, adding that Netanyahu met Mimran in France when Netanyahu was a “private citizen”. The Mimran family was, it claimed, “well-known and respected in France and there were no legal allegations against it.” The statement concluded with the claim that Netanyahu “didn’t ask for anything from, didn’t receive any contributions from and didn’t give anything to the Mimran family”. Just two weeks later, that statement has proved to be a lie.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse