Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Avigdor Lieberman Faces Corruption Charge

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will be indicted for fraud and breach of trust, charges that may lead him to resign, but the Justice Ministry dropped more serious corruption allegations in a nearly 12-year-old case.

The announcement comes just weeks before a Jan. 22 election in which the right-wing party of Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is predicted to win.

Lieberman has denied all wrongdoing and said in the past he would resign if indicted, though it was unclear how he would now act since the charges he face are less severe than anticipated.

Lieberman is expected to speak later on Thursday.

The fraud and breach of trust charges centred on suspected cronyism in Lieberman’s efforts to promote an Israeli diplomat who had leaked him privileged information about a separate police probe pertaining to Lieberman.

Legal experts say Lieberman may resign, following the precedent of other Israeli officials indicted for corruption in recent years, including former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was acquitted of most of those charges this year.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.