Yair Lapid
Yair Lapid is an Israeli politician, founder of the Yesh Atid party, and a former prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister. He was finance minister in the government formed on 18 March 2013; later opposition leader, foreign minister and alternate prime minister in the Bennett–Lapid government; and caretaker prime minister from late June 2022 until a new government was formed after that year's election. In 2014, according to Channel 12's Uvda, the businessman Idan Ofer hired Black Cube in connection with a dispute over natural-resource taxation that touched Lapid and other officials. Ofer acknowledged a brief hire; accounts differ on whether the dispute was over gas or mining royalties, and on whether any proposal was carried out.[1][2][3][4]
Offices
Lapid entered politics in 2012 as head of Yesh Atid. In the 2013 election the party finished second, with 19 seats, and he became finance minister in a Likud-led coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu later fired him. After further elections he formed an alliance with former IDF chief Benny Gantz; when Gantz briefly joined Netanyahu in 2020, Lapid became opposition leader. In 2021 Yesh Atid again finished second. Lapid assembled the coalition that removed Netanyahu, agreeing to rotate the premiership with Naftali Bennett and taking the foreign ministry and the post of alternate prime minister. When that government collapsed in June 2022, Lapid took over as caretaker prime minister until elections later that year. AJC described him as Israel's 14th prime minister.[1][2][3]
Black Cube and Idan Ofer (2014)
Uvda, broadcast on 6 June 2019, reported that Ofer had hired Black Cube in 2014 to dig up material on Lapid, then finance minister, and on other officials, in order to influence tax policy on natural-gas finds. The programme said Lapid had appointed an advisory panel to raise taxes on resource-company profits after offshore discoveries, and that the point of the hire was to smear Lapid and the arbitrators. The Times of Israel and AP summarised the same broadcast as aimed at tax policy on natural gas.[4][5]
Black Cube denied meeting Ofer or targeting politicians, judges or regulators, and sued the programme. Ofer's spokesman confirmed a brief contract but said its intelligence was not used and had come from public sources. Lapid said he would not be swayed by an influence campaign.[4]
In August 2019 Haaretz gave a different account of the commercial dispute. It named the client as ICL, controlled by Ofer, which "was at odds with the government over how much it should pay for its mining operations", and the targets as Lapid, the accountant general Michal Abadi-Boiangiu and the deputy attorney general Avi Licht. It reported that Ofer acknowledged hiring the company, and that sources close to Black Cube said the firm had drafted a proposal for him that "was never carried out". The gas account (ToI/AP on Uvda) and the mining account (Haaretz, August) both remain on the record; so do the denial, the acknowledgement of a hire, and the "never carried out" line. More detail is on the Idan Ofer page.[6]
External resources
- Lapid at Ariel vows not to give away settlement blocks, jpost.com, 30 October 2012.
- Gil Rosen, Lapid: I Want to be Rid of the Arabs, israelnationalnews.com, 20 January 2013.
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Government 33, knesset.gov.il, accessed 18 March 2013.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Josef Federman (AP), Set to become prime minister, Lapid faces critical test against resurgent Netanyahu, Times of Israel, 22 June 2022.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 5 Things to Know About Israel's New Prime Minister Yair Lapid, American Jewish Committee, 30 June 2022.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 AP and ToI Staff, Israeli tycoon hired Black Cube to smear Yair Lapid in 2014 — report, Times of Israel, 7 June 2019.
- ↑ Ora Coren, Israeli Tycoon Hired Spy Firm to Get Dirt on Finance Minister, Report Says, Haaretz, 4 June 2019.
- ↑ Gur Megiddo, Israel Hired Black Cube, Allowing Spy Firm to Operate Out of Military Intel Base, Haaretz, 22 August 2019.