Maof

      So here's how you bury the Yossi Ginosar scandal. You create an even better one. Like clockwork, before every national election, the Attorney General or State Comptroller recommends indicting Likud politicians for sundry crimes. In 1992, this strategy helped put Rabin in power.

This year the strategy resumed with new urgency. It served the double purpose of trying to put Labor back in power and covering up the scandal that can destroy its very existence forever; the Ginosar/Arafat/Muhamed/Lev/Barak/Peres/Beilin embezzlement of the Oslo "peace" process.

This week, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein discovered vote buying at the Likud primaries and within a nanosecond ordered the police to open an investigation. The media hopped on board in half a nanosecond and voila, the public is talking about such steamy issues as the selling of sex for Likud votes. Meanwhile, the Attorney General has not ordered an investigation of Ginosar and the media are forgetting this infinitely more felonious crime.

Not that the public is completely blind to the farce. Reports I received from inside the Feiglin camp confirm the charges against the Likud. But everyone knows that Labor invented vote buying and this year was no different than any other. So, Rubinstein announced that he has directed the police to investigate Labor too. That should hog the headlines until the election and shunt Ginosar aside until his crimes no longer interest the public.

And while the Likud's corruption is guaranteed to grab most of the reporting space, look what Rubinstein forgot to investigate:

* Gad Zeevi is finally being indicted for massive fraud. To follow this side scandal, do a search at  www.globes.co.il  As I recently reported, Zeevi and Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna were just a bit too buddy buddy over the past years. Mitzna handed Zeevi prime municipal real estate for a song to build huge shopping and residential complexes. So why aren't Mitzna's ties to international bunko artist Zeevi being investigated by Rubinstein?

* And look who is number ten on the Labor list. Why it's none other than Isaac Herzog, son of the president who pardoned Ginosar for his blatant crimes of perjury in 1987. Isaac was head of Ehud Barak's campaign team which defrauded innocent, well-meaning foreigners with scam charity projects whose donations went straight into Barak's wallet. Rubinstein ordered this scandal investigated two years ago and subsequently Herzog took the Fifth with the cops, revealing not a word about his illegal activities. Now why did Labor put him into their top ten charts?

Rubinstein's strategy to hush Ginosar may not work because this scandal is just so filthy. Knowing how the government covered up the real Rabin murder, we shouldn't be too hopeful. Yet there are signs.

For one thing, new information was published by Maariv last Friday. An owner of the original Jericho casino explained how Ginosar got wind of the project and had a little talk with the PLO's intelligence chief Jibril Rajoub. He turned up at the building site with his goons and gave the workers twenty minutes to clear out. He then took over the casino with his partner Ginosar.

And the plot thickens. Ginosar planted himself in the Defence Ministry and persuaded its Minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer not to attack the casino. So while the intifada burned, the casino's profits kept rolling in, then to be skimmed by Ginosar and Rajoub. And while reported income was a mere $50 million monthly, the actual take was closer to an astounding $800 million. This was a money laundering apparatus par excellence. Only when the terrorists used the casino building to attack the IDF did the army put an end to its operation.

Now why, oh why, did Ben Eliezer agree to Ginosar's protection request? Could it be money, money, money? In his pocket, pocket, pocket?

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