A new set of documents soon to be exposed by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) sheds more light on the affair dubbed Qatargate, which involves a series of documents showcasing Qatari authorities allegedly instructing the transfer of tens of millions of dollars to Israeli officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former foreign minister and current head of the Yisrael Beiteynu party, Avigdor Liberman.The new documents, dating back to 2012 and reviewed exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, revolve around an internal report by the Jordanian Anti Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Unit regarding an attempt made to deposit a $10 million check from a company named Seadrift Coke to an account held by a Turkish firm titled: The Import and Export company.According to the report, this was a straw company that belonged to another firm entitled Uzmanlar, which, per the analysis, allegedly had “connections to armed groups” who used it to facilitate money laundering.
The Jordanian authorities who wrote the report alleged that the $10 million check written under Seadrift Coke belonged, in fact, to Netanyahu, who had seemingly held large shares in the Texas-based firm through his cousin, Nathan Milikowsky. Noteworthily, the Seadrift affair was mentioned in a 2019 expose by The Times of Israel, though according to the article, Netanyahu had reportedly sold his shares back in 2010.Notably, this check rejection also appears on a document issued by Jordan National Bank.
‘No evidence that the money was in fact transferred or received’
These Jordanian allegations complement the findings brought up in the Post’s interview with MEMRI founder and president Yigal Carmon from July 2, in which he elaborated on his research regarding a series of previously leaked documents attributed to high-ranking Qatari officials from 2012 and 2018, featuring alleged instructions to transfer tens of millions of dollars to Netanyahu and Liberman, who were running together under one united party in the 2012 elections.Though the older documents did not disclose whether the funds ended up being transferred, Carmon pointed out validating circumstantial evidence in the form of the questionable involvement of Qatar in Gazan affairs which assumedly received Israel’s formal blessing, evident by the cash, rather than the bank, transactions, as well as in the irregular personal behavior of the individuals involved on the Israeli side of matters.Distinctly, as opposed to the older leaked documents published by Carmon, which originated in the Raven Project and were viewed as part of a “leak war” between the Qataris and the Emiratis, the newly published documents are mainly of Jordanian origin, which may indicate a cross-referencing of events from different, unrelated sources.Other documents published by MEMRI last week revolved around a bank transfer of $50 million from an account dubbed the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development to the account of the World Vision organization in Jordan, to which the local Anti Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Unit referred to as “suspicious,” reporting the seizure of the monetary resources and claiming that the grounds for this suspicion were based on “joint intelligence findings regarding the movement of funds belonging to the World Vision organization, suspected of acting to fund suspicious organizations, including Hamas, in cooperation with Binyamin Netanyahu, via other financial accounts.”
