Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have been residing in a Jerusalem villa owned by American billionaire Simon Falic in the past week, Channel 13 reported on Wednesday, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis were internally displaced from their homes after Hamas's October 7 massacre.
Furthermore, the Netanyahus had reportedly brought in their state-paid personal chef to Falic's Talpiot estate, a breach of regulations that do not allow for a state employee to work in a private home.
It is not clear whether Falic and his family are currently residing in the home.
Channel 13 also reported that the prime minister's official residence in Azza Street still undergoes daily cleaning, despite being empty.
Who is American Jewish billionaire Simon Falic?
American Jewish billionaire and philanthropist Simon Falic is the chairman of Duty Free Americas, which operates over 200 duty-free stores in airports and at border crossings across the Western Hemisphere.
The Falic family are also partial owners of the Israeli Psagot winery, which caught attention in 2019 when the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the wine must be marked as a settlement product.
This caused then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo to make the first-ever trip by a secretary of state to a settler entity in the West Bank when he visited the winery. During the visit, he announced that the US would allow settlement goods such as Psagot wines to be labeled as Israeli products.
Earlier this year, Falic and his family received the Jerusalem Award for the Development of Judea and Samaria.