Companies controlled by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich donated tens of millions of pounds to an Israeli settler group accused of displacing Palestinian families from Jerusalem and Palestinian territories, according to leaked documents seen by BBC News Arabic.
An investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, controls companies that have donated $100m to Elad settler organization.
Elad operates in occupied East Jerusalem, working on displacing native Palestinians from the holy city in breach of international law.
The billionaire Russian oligarch, who was granted Israeli citizenship in 2018, has been an avid philanthropist in ‘Israel’, donating huge sums to several institutions.
According to the BBC News Arabic investigation, which analysed documents leaked to Buzzfeed News who shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, four companies owned or controlled by Abramovich in the British Virgin Islands have contributed more than $100m (£74m) to Elad.
Those figures would mean the British football club owner was the biggest single donor over the past 15 years to Elad, a Hebrew word which means “God’s eternal faith”, it added.
Elad also runs the so-called City of David and other archaeological sites, visited by a million tourists each year in occupied Jerusalem. The dig has been criticised by European Union diplomats as seeking to ignore the ancient city’s history in favour of “an exclusively Jewish narrative, while detaching the place from its Palestinian surroundings”.
Elad, just like other settler organizations in occupied Palestine, by buying Palestinian houses through indirect devious means and using controversial Israeli laws that allow the state to take over Palestinian property.
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