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Lawyers for Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz have launched a new attempt to overturn his bribery conviction, with a cache of hacked documents they say prove alleged illegal behavior by the Swiss prosecutor who jailed him.
Steinmetz, a multi-billionaire investor who made his fortune in diamonds, became one of the most influential and controversial figures in global mining before his takeover of the world’s largest iron ore deposit led to a spectacular fall from grace.
In January 2021, a Geneva court found him guilty of bribing Guinean officials to secure mining rights to Simandou’s iron ore, and sentenced him to five years in prison. An attempted appeal last year failed to overturn the conviction, but saw his sentence commuted to three years.
Steinmetz’s lawyers are already contesting that appeal at the Swiss Supreme Court, but last week filed a new request to have his conviction annulled in Geneva and demanded a new trial.
According to the Financial Times, the motion contains a series of documents that lawyers say come from the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
A trove of Israeli Justice Ministry files were dumped online by an unknown hacking group in April in an apparent attempt to discredit Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The Israeli Ministry of Justice files also contain documents about Steinmetz, an Israeli citizen.
Steinmetz’s lawyers claim that the documents show that the Geneva prosecutor in charge of his case, Claudio Mascotto, traveled to Israel and allegedly entered into secret negotiations with the key witness who testified against Steinmetz, his former business partner Ofer Kerzner .
Mascotto promised Kerzner that he would not be prosecuted as long as he testified against his former associate, Steinmetz’s lawyers allege.
Under Swiss law, any form of settlement is illegal.
Steinmetz’s lawyers are demanding the annulment of all legal findings against him since 2017. They are requesting a new trial and asking that the testimony of Kerzner and another key witness be expunged from the record.
“We are talking about a man who has been wrongly found guilty based on unreliable evidence. And if we’ve gotten this far, it’s because the prosecutor violated basic procedural standards to obtain evidence it intended to rely on in support of an indictment,” said Steinmetz’s attorney, Daniel Kinzer.
A spokesperson for the Geneva prosecutors declined to comment, citing their official obligation to remain silent on ongoing legal proceedings.
Steinmetz has long argued — without evidence — that Mascotto harbored a personal grudge against him and exceeded his mandate as prosecutor in the case. After his appeal failed last year, he also accused billionaire George Soros of financing a campaign against him and unduly influencing Swiss courts.
The Guinean government stripped Steinmetz’s company BSG Resources of its rights to Simandou – one of mining’s richest prizes – in 2014 after concluding he had bribed government officials.
Steinmetz’s alleged partner in the project, Brazilian mining group Vale, subsequently launched its own legal action against him, accusing him of fraudulently luring the company into the deal.
However, Vale dropped a $1.2 billion personal claim against Steinmetz in London in 2022, saying too much time had passed since the disputed events for a legal claim to be valid under British law.