'PA officials involved in sale of Jerusalem assets to Jewish groups'

Former Palestinian General Intelligence chief Fahmi Shabana told a press conference in Jerusalem Monday that a senior officer in the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus sold Palestinian assets in the Old City to a Jewish organization.

According to Shabana, the officer was not prosecuted despite the fact that investigators were able to gather solid evidence against him.

The former intelligence chief said the decision not to prosecute the officer was made by senior PA officials, which, according to him, indicates their involvement in the selling of Palestinian assets in Jerusalem.

Shabana further claimed that another Palestinian officer served as a go-between in the sale of a building that housed the Palestinian newspaper Al-Fajr to an extremist Jewish organization.

The former intelligence director added that on another occasion a prominent attorney with connections to the PA tried to transfer the ownership of a Palestinian home in the Old City to Jews. However, a Palestinian court refused to authorize the transfer, he said.

Shabana claimed that senior Palestinian officials are involved in the transfer of Palestinian assets to the hands of extremist Jewish groups, adding that so far no action has been taken against them.

The former intelligence head recently revealed an embarrassing video from 2008 depicting the head of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office, Rafik al-Husseini, rubbing his body against his secretary and apparently trying to convince a woman seeking employment in the office to have sexual relations with him.

He claimed that officials close to Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat were entangled in corruption scandals amounting to millions of shekels stolen from public coffers.

Shabana, who was in charge of the PA's anti-corruption campaign, claimed in interviews with the media that he placed before Abbas evidence of widespread economic corruption around him, but that the president declined doing anything about it. According to him, senior Fatah officials during Arafat's rule stole millions of shekels from PA coffers, a large amount of which originated from Arab states, Europe, and the US as donations.