The relationship between James Packer and Israel’s upper crust is the stuff of legend, with the billionaire nepo baby regularly wining and dining the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the astonishing largesse – champagne, cigars, fancy dinners and the like – bestowed by Packer on the country’s most influential figures inevitably attracted backlash and scrutiny. Known as the “gifts affair,” Packer’s generosity to Netanyahu would form part of a still-ongoing corruption case brought against the PM.
Packer has not been accused of any wrongdoing in Israel over his gifts.
Another of the country’s elite close with Packer was Yossi Cohen, the former chief of Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, popularly known as “the model” for his boyish handsomeness. Packer would refer to him as “James Bond”.
A $20,000 gift from the casino mogul to his favourite spook to help pay for Cohen’s daughter’s wedding was the subject of a police probe into the Mossad operative.
But this week, with Israel convulsed by mass protests over Netanyahu’s attempts to kneecap the judiciary (which is, remember, still investigating the whole corruption thing), the country’s attorney-general announced a closure of the probe into Cohen, citing a green light received from Mossad’s legal advisers, plus an expiry of relevant statutes of limitations.
Read the article by Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell in The Sydney Morning Herald.