Mossad’s Yossi Cohen and Israel’s former U.S. envoy Ron Dermer ‘spoke with top U.S. officials over many months’ on Dan Gertler’s case, Bloomberg reports
Mar. 19, 2021
photo Credit: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Israel’s former Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer were involved in a campaign to convince former U.S. President Donald Trump to suspend sanctions imposed on Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler, who has been embroiled in a years-long, multi-million dollar corruption scandal in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
On January 15, just five days before Trump vacated the White House, the U.S. Treasury informed Gertler that it would be lifting many of the sanctions imposed on him, but last week the President Joe Biden’s administration revoked the sanctions waiver.
According to the Bloomberg report, Israeli officials said Getler was “a vital national security asset.” Spy agency chief Cohen and Ambassador Dermer reportedly “spoke with top U.S. officials over many months,” and the Mossad head also “made two previously unreported trips to Congo in 2019 to meet with Gertler and former President Joseph Kabila.”
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