from 21st Century Wire:
On 1 September 2026, the INS Drakon left the TKMS shipyard in Kiel under police escort and entered the canal on its way to Haifa. The submarine had reportedly been transferred to the Israeli navy behind closed doors on 22 July. German taxpayers contributed €135 million towards the vessel, even as the wider naval procurement programme remained at the centre of an unfinished Israeli criminal trial and a state inquiry into decisions that investigators say bypassed the country’s security establishment.
VIDEO: The Israeli submarine INS Drakon passes through the Kiel Canal under heavy police protection on 1 September 2026, beginning its journey from Germany to Haifa, Israel.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
By 2017, the allegations had become serious enough for Berlin to postpone a separate agreement to finance three more submarines. The delay lasted only until October, when Germany committed another €540 million, but this time attached an unpublished condition requiring the corruption investigations to end and the resulting suspicions to be cleared before the vessels could be delivered. A later Bundestag answer confirmed that the memorandum addressed the allegations without revealing how Berlin eventually decided that its condition had been met.
The Israeli attorney general was expected to confirm that the investigations had ended, while Berlin kept the power to decide whether the corruption suspicions had been cleared and to stop delivery if new evidence emerged. The decision was to be recorded through an exchange of notes between the two governments. Neither the exchange nor Germany’s assessment has been published. Although the agreement did not cover the Drakon, which had been ordered years earlier, Berlin had made the corruption case a condition of its next €540 million commitment. It later allowed the programme to continue while the Israeli proceedings remained unfinished, without revealing who cleared the condition or what evidence justified it.
At the centre of the case stood an intermediary whose appointment ThyssenKrupp says it can no longer explain.
IMAGE: Armed Israeli security personnel escort the INS Drakon during its passage through the Kiel Canal in Germany. (Source: Israël, My Beloved via Facebook)
The Man in the Middle
Michael Ganor had represented ThyssenKrupp in Israel since 2009 and received €10.4 million in commissions from the naval contracts. Israeli prosecutors allege that he channelled part of that money to officials who could help steer purchases towards the German shipbuilder.
But Ganor’s potential earnings did not stop when ThyssenKrupp secured a contract. Internal company documents reported by Globes put his commission at 2% and show that he could also earn from procurement used to meet ThyssenKrupp’s offset obligations in Israel. He was therefore positioned to benefit when Israel bought the vessels and again when work generated by those purchases flowed back to Israeli companies. The offset contracts and their beneficiaries remain undisclosed, concealing how far Ganor’s influence and financial interests may have extended through the deal.
Read More @ 21stCenturyWire.com
