Israeli Television, Channel 10, reported on Tuesday that the Israeli police have evidence that the family of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, received $3 million in bribes from Austrian businessman Martin Schlaff.
The amount is part of a complicated case involving illegal campaign contributions.
Israeli online daily, Haaretz, reported that a report published by channel 10 showed a document it said was delivered by police to a court that confiscated material from the home of the Schlaff family in Israel.
The document is said to be evidence of bribery; the Police have been investigating the case, stemming from the 1999 elections, for more than two years.
According to Haaretz, one of Sharon’s main aides, Lior Chorev, refused to comment on the report on Tuesday, adding that no official in Israel has said this, "except reporters".
So far, no official comments were made by the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
The published report comes while Sharon is running for the re-election as the head of Kadima party.
An Israeli source reported that despite of polls findings that Sharon and his family are corrupt, a large number of voters are still supporting him.
The two sons of Sharon, Omri and Gilad, were investigated by the police in regard to two cases of bribery, but Sharon was never charged.
Omri Sharon resigned from the Knesset, on Tuesday, after conviction on charges related to the same case which was covered in the Channel 10 report.
Haaretz reported that Omri pleaded guilty in November to falsifying corporate documents, perjury and violating party funding laws.
Charges of fraud and breech of trust, filed against him, were dropped under a plea deal with the prosecution which still demands imprisonment for other counts.
According to Channel 10 report, the latest turn in the bribery case stems from an investigation into a dappled $1.5 million loan which the family of Sharon took from Cyril Kern, a South African businessman, in order to pay back illegal contributions to Sharon’s 1999 primary election campaign.
The police suspected for some time that Kern was not the source of the loan; but he was rather a medium for money from Schlaff and his son, James.
Also, the document presented by the police to the court came in response to a request by James Schlaff to retrieve his computers which were confiscated during the police raid to his house, in addition to handheld computers, documents, and other materials were also confiscated in the raid; Schlaff cancelled the request.
