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January 23, 2003
Police probe Mitzna bribe allegations
By Dan Izenberg
The police on Wednesday seized documents from the City Engineering Department and the mayor's office of the Haifa Municipality. It marked the first step into the investigation of a complaint by Likud Central Committee member Aviad Visuli that Labor Party chairman Amram Mitzna accepted a contractor's bribe during his term as mayor.
According to the complaint, Mitzna received free office space for his Labor primary election campaign in September 2002 from A. Levy Building Contractors. Mitzna's campaign offices were located on 30 Horev St. in Haifa's Ahuza neighborhood, in the building housing the contracting company's main headquarters.
In return, Mitzna, who headed the local Planning and Building Committee, allegedly spearheaded a request to approve extra building rights for the contractor in a project called the Galilee View Twins on Dulcin St. in Haifa.
Visuli accused Mitzna of trying to help the contractor build extra stories illegally. Visuli charged that the contracting company originally received a permit to build the towers without the additional stories. It proceeded to build the extra stories while allegedly cutting out the pages of the original permit and replacing them with new pages including the additional stories. The illegal construction was discovered and halted, and police launched an investigation into the affair, said Visuli. However, the contractors brought the plan with the extra stories back to the local Planning and Building Committee and asked it to approve the proposal.
Mitzna allegedly spearheaded the campaign to approve the new permit and voted in favor. According to Visuli, the plan including the extra stories was approved in October 2002, one month after Mitzna received his free office space.
On December 29, Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered Cmdr. Moshe Mizrahi, head of the Police Investigations Unit, to investigate Visuli's charges.
The raid on the municipal offices was conducted by police from the northern branch of the National Unit for Fraud Investigations.
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