Zaken: I'll reveal all in Talansky affair if Tax Authority case dropped

By JPOST.COM STAFF, DAN IZENBERG
Shula Zaken's lawyer Micha Feldman began formulating a deal for his client, according to which she will divulge all she knows about the Talansky affair, and in return a case against her implicating her in political nominations in the Tax Authority be closed. Zaken, a long-time aide of Olmert, was according to investigators the middleman who received some of the funds New York financier Morris Talansky gave Olmert. The Tax Authority affair became public early in 2007, when the police announced that they had detained 22 people, including Tax Authority employees, private businessmen and Zaken, then head of the prime minister's bureau. After conducting a secret investigation for the two previous months, police suspected that then head of the Tax Authority Jackie Matza and others had received bribes in return for charging less taxes than they should have to various businessmen, and for making appointments to the authority according to the dictates of powerful businessmen closely linked to Zaken. Zaken demands as part of the deal her lawyer is trying to reach that she will not be asked to reveal any information prior to her own investigation and that she not be made a state witness.