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High
Society
AB Vienna/Tel
Aviv - Rafael (Rafram) Hadad (above)  , who holds dual Israeli and Libyan
citizenship, and was held in Libya since March, was on his way back to Israel
Monday, after being released in a complex diplomatic
deal. Hadad was flown to the Austrian capital Sunday
night, where he was greeted by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman (2nd from above) .
The Austrian businessman Martin Schlaff (3rd from
above)
had played a major role. Lieberman had asked his
friend Schlaff to intercede, after unsuccessful attempts to use contacts in France, Italy and the US.
Schlaff was born 1953 in Vienna, Austria to Jewish refugees from World War II. Together with his brother James he became predominantly active in trade with East Germany. He maintained good contacts with the German Democratic Republic and the communist party of
Austria. Schlaff
supplied the German Democratic Republic with goods that were embargoed by the West.
German investigations concluded in 1998 that Schlaff had
financially supported the creation of new companies by former Stasi employees in spring 1990. These same agents had been based in Dresden until 1989.
There was an investigation that Shlaff illegally transferred technological know-how to the German Democratic
Republic. In addition, he was suspected for money
laundering .
ABCD In 1998,
Schlaff opened a casino in Jericho during Binyamin Netanyahu’s (4th from
above)
first term as prime minister 1996 to 1999, in partnership with a company partly owned by Yasir
Arafat (4th from below), named "The Oasis". It was meant for Israelis who could not gamble in Israel due to its
illegality. It was closed, however, during the Second
Intifada . The casino
deal is one of the most corruption-laden aspects of the 1993 Oslo Accords . For years, gambling moguls lobbied for a casino in Israel and were rebuffed. Finally, with the “Gaza and Jericho First” stage of the
"Oslo Accords", in which the two areas were relinquished to PLO control, the Knesset no longer needed to approve the casino’s
establishment. While it remained illegal to gamble in Israel, Israelis flocked to the Jericho casino to gamble there, forking over an average of a million dollars a day. Local Arabs were barred from gambling there by the nascent Palestinian
Authority. At the start of the Second
Intifada in 2000, after Arab terrorists used the casino to fire at
Israeli soldiers and a tank blew a hole in the front of it, Schlaff tried to broker a cease-fire to get the casino running
again through then-mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert (3rd from below) , who would meet with Yasser Arafat’s confidant Mohammad Rashid,
Arafat's representative in the casino. Olmert, Rashid and Schlaff met at least six times.
In 2006, Schlaff was investigated by the Israeli police for bribing Ariel
Sharon
(2nd from below) ,
Israeli Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. An investigative exposé
unearthed connections between Schlaff, the financier of the Oasis Casino in Jericho and Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister
from 2006 to2009, and his predecessor Ariel Sharon. Sharon had received a $3 million
bribe, and Lieberman is still under investigation for
receiving a bribe from Schlaff. Austrian and Israeli prosecutors are investigating Schlaff and Robert
Nowikovsky, an Austrian connected to shadowy Gazprom
companies, of paying 4.5 million dollars to Sharon's sons in 2002.
In 2002, Schlaff used his good contacts to Ariel Sharon
to help normalize the Austrian Federal Government's relations with Israel.
Schlaff has links to Gazprom companies. His close confidant Michael Hason holds a number of positions in the Centrex Group, which is believed to be a Gazprom
company.
Schlaff also own a company in Cyprus which is registered in the same address as Centrex Holding and shares some directors with Gazprom
companies.
Schlaff secretly owns shares in East Mediterranean Gas Company.
In June 2010 Martin Schlaff's business partner from
NYC, Solomon Obstfeld (below)
was found dead in an apparent suicide or murder.
Schlaff flew in to NY for the funeral. Interestingly, the murder or forced suicide of Obstfeld occurred just one week after Ehud Olmert visited Obstfeld in his office to figure out how much he knows and to make sure that Obstfeld not talk unnecessarily to Israeli
investigators. Private investigators are now determining if the Israeli mafia was involved on Olmert's behalf.
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