Yad Vashem denies funding any of Olmert's flights

By JPOST.COM STAFF
In the latest development in the 'Rishon Tours' case, Yad Vashem denied funding any of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's flights. Olmert is accused of billing multiple donors and organizations for the same overseas trips over several years, and using the excess - tens of thousands of dollars - to pay for personal flights abroad for himself and family members. In response to a request from the Ometz watchdog group to all organizations that funded Olmert's trips to demand their money back, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev wrote that his organization did not fund, either directly nor indirectly, any of the prime minister's trips. He claimed that the flight in question was apparently paid for by one of the associations affiliated to the Friends of Yad Vashem for the purpose of preserving the memory of Holocaust victims. He said those associations were legally separate entities and were subordinate to laws in the countries in which they were based.