Cyril Kern, the South African citizen who apparently helped to bankroll his friend Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s campaign to snatch the leadership of the now ruling Likud Party, has decried Israeli reaction to the affair.
Speaking on Israeli Army Radio, Kern said of the prime minister that ”He’s a friend, and I’m very happy that I was able to assist a friend, and that’s that.”
He said he did not understand ”the character assassination that you have in Israel at the moment”.
Following publication of the report in the Israeli daily website Ha’aretz, advisers to Sharon conceded on Tuesday that the prime minister had received the cash from Kern, but denied any connection to criminal activity.
According to the allegations, Sharon received Kern’s money to serve as collateral for a loan his sons Omri and Gilad took out to pay back a company from which Sharon received illegal campaign contributions during his primaries campaign for the Likud leadership.
Kern told the Israeli daily said he had ”clarified the misinformation or disinformation that’s been spread by Ha’aretz. I was very happy to help. It’s what anybody would do for a friend. I’m just very, very sorry that in Israel, everybody’s being so destabilising at a time when you should be united.”
He added that he had ”no business [interests] whatsoever in Israel, never ever, I regret to say, although I am a founder member of the state of Israel”.
The businessman told the radio staion that he had last spoken with Sharon two or three weeks ago, and ”we’ve had a continuous relationship for over 50 years”.
Asked who requested the loan, Kern replied, ”I understand the family and I’ve known them a long time. When situations occur with friends, you don’t have to ask.”
The multi-millionaire former fashion magnate, runs a huge furniture, textile and beadwork business, The Sourcing Office, in Cape Town.
Kern broke his silence on Tuesday night, saying he wanted to retain his privacy.
”I am not involved in Israeli politics,” he said, but added that he had served in the Israeli army with Sharon prior to independence in 1948. ”We (the now prime minister) and I were in the same unit together.”
He said he went ”on a pilgrimage” to stay with Sharon’s family on his farm in Israel each year. ”We are very close personal friends.”
Pressed on had he known the money was for the Likud leadership campaign — apparently to pay staff — Kern said simply: ”It was a personal loan. I am not a political animal in any shape or form. I support a friend in a time of need.”
Ha’aretz, which is not known for its support for Likud, reported Kern’s funds were allegedly used to serve as collateral for a loan Sharon’s sons, Omri and Gilad, took out to pay back a company — Annex Research — from which Sharon allegedly received illegal campaign contributions during his primaries for the Likud leadership.
The Israeli paper also traced the route that the money took between the two parties, saying Kern transferred $1,49-million to Sharon’s sons on January 15 2002 from a bank account in Austria, through the JP Morgan Bank in New York, and into the Sharon brothers’ account in a Discount Bank branch on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard.
Meanwhile, Ha’aretz quoted Israeli Labour Party Chairman Amram Mitzna calling on Sharon to resign or present his own account of the events in question.
”If Sharon decides to keep quiet he will lose his legitimacy and be unworthy of leading Israel in its hour of crisis,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday in Tel Aviv convened in response to the allegations, Sharon’s political adviser Eyal Arad told reporters that ”it is not by chance that there are leaks, lies and disinformation designed to bring down the prime minister and his government”.
Arad denied that the loan from Kern was a bribe, and said that it was a lawful loan that was repaid with interest last month.
Ha’aretz said that at the heart of the affair is the suspicion that Sharon may have misled police investigators or concealed information on the source of the funding of the repayment of illegal campaign contributions donated to Sharon when he ran for the Likud leadership in a 1999 primary.
Sharon reportedly told police that the contributions — repaid on the instructions of the State Comptroller — were repaid through a mortgage on his Sycamore Ranch in the western Negev, while the repayment was actually made possible by Kern’s low-interest personal loan of $1,5-million.
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