A report on the News1 site Thursday said that a lawsuit by a Tel Aviv entrepreneur could implicate Koby Kahlon, brother of Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon and manager of his campaign, with influence peddling.Yoav Aviv, an entrepreneur and former CEO of the Globus Group, is suing an engineering company for NIS 3 million that he says he is owed for several projects, among them the development of Jerusalem's Cinema City movie theater.
According to the lawsuit, Aviv was the one who came up with the idea of turning the open area near the Knesset into an income-producing property. He had made the preparations and developed the plans for what would become Cinema City, when the company, Shapir Engineering, in 2005 decided to drop Globus Group and Aviv's services and work with another company – because it had “connections” with Koby Kahlon, who was deputy mayor of Jerusalem and chairman of the city's zoning committee at the time.
Aviv is suing for money he says he is owed, as well as for damage to his reputation and his personal ethics.
It should be noted that the lawsuit does not accuse Koby Kahlon of any wrongdoing, but it does claim that the company that eventually got the development contract, New Lineo, was chosen in part for its “connections” to Kahlon. The lawsuit does not specify what those connections were, but Aviv charges that he was told by a Shapir Engineering principal that they “preferred to work with New Lineo” because of the connections, “because they could enable the company to expand the area allocated to the project's commercial development,” as eventually transpired.
The case is pending, and the defendants have not yet submitted their version of the story.