Yesh Atid and party chairman Yair Lapid are facing their first charges of unethical conduct following the revelation that one of Lipid’s advisers is a part-owner of a beer company that is due tor receive aid from the Finance Ministry that Lapid heads.
Hillel Kobrinsky is an adviser to Lapid and holds a 4 percent stake in Abeer Habar, the owner of Alexander Beer that is in line to receive government compensation for the recent tax hike on alcoholic beverages, the Israeli Globes business newspaper revealed.
A petition for disclosure of agreements singed by Kobrinsky has been filed by Globes under the Freedom of Information Law.
Lapid’s media advisor Nilly Richman countered that Kobrinsky and Yoram Bauman, who managed the Yesh Atid election campaign and also is an investor in the beer company, are suing Globes.
Kobrinsky and Bauman, through their lawyer, today sent a warning to “Globes,” in which they claim that the article implied that they were behind the measure that led to the decision to help microbreweries by exploiting their ties with the finance minister and for personal gain.
However, the Movement for Quality Government charged that the report raises “concern of flawed ethical conduct and raises suspicion of inappropriate and improper conduct…about the closeness of some of the owners of the dominant breweries involved in the process to the finance minister himself and to his party, especially when this has not been disclosed.”