Investigation: Israeli Company Elbit Suspended from NATO Procurement due to Corruption

Investigative journalists have discovered that Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, is involved in a corruption scandal involving NATO’s procurement agency. The company has been suspended from procurement amid an anti-corruption investigation.

This was reported by Follow the Money, whose journalists conducted the investigation together with La Lettre, Le Soir, and Knack.

According to the journalists, the NATO Procurement Agency (NSPA) is at the center of a wide corruption scandal in which current and former employees are suspected of taking bribes.

According to investigators, defense companies paid bribes worth potentially millions of euros to win contracts through NSPA to supply products to the military alliance and 32 member states.

Documents obtained by journalists show that Elbit, one of NATO’s leading suppliers, was suspended by the NSPA on July 31. Several of the company’s existing contracts have been frozen, and the company itself has been banned from participating in new tenders. Elbit’s subsidiary Orion Advanced Systems was also suspended.

The frozen contracts include the supply of ammunition for wheeled self-propelled artillery systems, MLRS, and protection systems for military aircraft and helicopters. Contracts for the supply of detonators from Orion Advanced Systems have also been frozen.

Suspects

The publication also learned that a key figure associated with Elbit, an Italian citizen identified as Eliau E., is wanted internationally for his alleged role in bribing NSPA employees. The Belgian Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that an international arrest warrant was issued through Interpol on September 30.

The 60-year-old man is suspected of bribery and participation in an organized criminal group. He has not yet been arrested and may be traveling under a false identity, according to informed sources.

The suspect is the owner or director of several defense consulting companies: Elar Systems Corp in the United States, Eral Systems UAB in Lithuania, and Arelco Europe Management Consultancies, registered in Greece.

Although there is no public information linking him to Elbit, people close to the investigation claim that he plays an important role as a consultant to the company. Elbit itself is not currently under investigation.

Investigations into corruption at NSPA are ongoing in Belgium and Luxembourg, where the agency is headquartered.

Two people close to the investigation claim that Eliau was in close contact with a key figure in the Belgian investigation. This is a former Belgian Ministry of Defense official and former NSPA employee who began working as a consultant after leaving the agency in 2021.

He was arrested at Brussels Airport on May 12, 2025, on suspicion of involvement in an organized criminal group, corruption, and money laundering.

According to a source close to the investigation, they were introduced by Turkish citizen Ismail Terlemez, another former NSPA employee. He currently heads and co-owns Arca, one of Turkey’s fastest growing defense companies.

He was also arrested in Belgium in May. He was supposed to be extradited to the United States, where an investigation into corruption in NATO tenders was underway. However, the US investigation was suddenly halted in July, and the extradition request expired, so he was released.

Elbit Systems has denied any involvement in the corruption scandal and the contract freeze. The company insists that there were no violations in its activities regarding any project with NSPA.

“We have not been withdrawn or suspended from any NATO program, and no NSPA project has been stopped,” the company said.