Police probing construction in Modi'in Ilit neighborhood

[Englander]

By Akiva Eldar

The Israel Police's National Fraud Squad has opened a criminal investigation into the illegal construction of hundreds of housing units in the Matityahu East neighborhood of the Modi'in Ilit ultra-Orthodox settlement. A statement to this effect was submitted on Tuesday to the High Court of Justice in response to an injunction issued at the request of the Peace Now movement.

The police investigation is focusing on Modi'in Ilit council head Yaakov Gutterman, other senior council officials, entrepreneurs and large construction companies, Jewish real estate dealers who acquired privately owned Palestinian land, lawyers and settler organizations involved in "land redemption."

Hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to have changed hand s in the affair.

According to police suspicions, a lawyer at one of the settler organizations purchased the land in question based on an affidavit submitted by the mukhtar of Bil'in, who claimed that because of the security situation, he was unable to get to the village and collect the signatures of the landowners.

During the course of Tuesday's legal debate, the High Court was told of a land-laundering system that allowed the real-estate dealers and settler organizations to convert private land - purchased sometimes through dubious means - into "state land." Ahead of the construction of the separation fence in the area, the land was "returned" to the buyers so that they could establish facts on the ground and press the Defense Ministry into moving the route of the fence to the east of the new neighborhood.

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Haaretz