NEW YORK — A leading American Jewish supporter of the Middle East peace process is denying reports that he made millions of dollars from a slush fund involving Yasser Arafat and an Israeli envoy.
Stephen P. Cohen, a national scholar with the Israel Policy Forum and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, said Tuesday he’d never had business dealings with the Palestinians.
Cohen long has been involved in behind-the-scenes and public efforts to forge Israeli-Palestinian ties.
He denied last week’s report in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv that he helped Israeli envoy Yossi Ginossar illegally transfer $300 million in Palestinian Authority funds to a secret Swiss bank account controlled by the Palestinian Authority president.
“I was not involved in any way, at any time, with investment of funds or banking of the Palestinian Authority or of its leadership,” Cohen said in a prepared statement. “The Ma’ariv story about such funds is simply not about me, and I know nothing about that story.”
With Ginossar having served as a private channel to Arafat for three Labor Party prime ministers who were strong backers of the Oslo accords, fallout from the scandal is hitting the peace camp in the United States.
Some question whether the affair will further hamper groups advocating Israeli-Palestinian peace. “It may make it more difficult for the one group that has been most closely identified with Stephen P. Cohen — the Israel Policy Forum,” said Lewis Roth, assistant executive director of Americans For Peace Now.
Cohen also denied that he took a cut from cement and gasoline deals between Israeli and Palestinian companies. Ginossar aide Ezrad Lev told Ma’ariv that commissions from such deals netted millions of dollars for Cohen and “at least $10 million” for Ginossar.
“At the suggestion of Yossi [Ginossar], we created a small company. We concluded one deal of this kind on behalf of an Israeli company. The Israeli company, and only the Israeli company, compensated our company for our services,” Cohen said.
“I made contacts between business people in Israel and the Arab world and advocated prosperity as a key element in peace consolidation. I tried to help a few Israeli and American companies find partners in the Arab and Palestinian world.”
The “cooperative business was not my primary focus,” Cohen said, “but it was perfectly consistent with my attempts to bridge the societies.”
He declined to comment on the specific nature of his financial dealings with that Israeli firm or discuss how much he’d earned from the arrangement.
According to Ma’ariv, Ginossar worked with Arafat financial adviser Mohammed Rashid to funnel $300 million from the Arab Bank in Ramallah to the respected Swiss bank Lombard Odier & Cie. in April 1997.
Ginossar allegedly persuaded the bank to open the account for an offshore front company, then changed its name after the Israelis grew concerned that too many people knew about the fund. He set up an offshore firm called Brichrobe, and “another partner in the same company was Prof. Steve Cohen,” Ma’ariv reported. “Through the company, the two receive regular commissions from deals between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” and gave set percentages to companies Rashid owned.
Ginossar has denied profiting from the peace process.
Israeli leaders approached him to make “use of my special connections with the Palestinians as a private citizen,” he has said; any allegation to the contrary is “baseless and wicked.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has asked the Mossad intelligence agency and police to investigate.