Marianne Gingrich, the wife of the speaker of the House of Representatives, spent this week in Israel learning how to convince American companies to set up shop in a proposed free-trade zone in the Negev.
But even while in Israel, questions trailed her about the propriety of her working for a U.S. firm dedicated to setting up the free-trade zone, given her husband’s high political position.
Gingrich is vice president for business development of the Israel Export Development Company Ltd., which is trying to set up the free-trade zone near the city of Beersheba.
The group hopes to receive a formal contract for the zone from the Israeli government this summer.
She was first hired by the IEDC last September, when her husband, Newt Gingrich, was widely expected to be at least the House minority leader, assuming that the Democrats retained control of the House. She was promoted to her current position in January.
In an effort to dispel any hints of impropriety, Gingrich detailed her involvement with IEDC at a Jerusalem news conference.
Gingrich said her first introduction to the IEDC came in 1993, when she and her husband visited Israel as part of a tour arranged by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
“It was easy to get excited about the IEDC,” she told reporters, adding that this was what she and her husband had “been promoting all along — free trade and free markets without government intervention.”
When she returned to the United States, Gingrish said, she interested a group of U.S. businessmen in the free-trade zone project. She then approached the IEDC’s chairman and chief executive officer, David Yerushalmi, and proposed leading the group on a tour to Israel.
Before embarking on the trip, she added, Gingrich asked the Senate Ethics Committee whether there was any impropriety in her voluntary work for the IEDC.
She was told that in order to be reimbursed for her flight fare, she would have to be a company employee.
Aware of her delicate position, particularly after her husband became speaker of the House, Gingrich said she consulted several prominent attorneys in Washington, despite the fact that her husband does not come under the jurisdiction of the Senate Ethics Committee.
Once she was satisfied that there was no impropriety, Gingrich said, she asked Yerushalmi to employ her.
Yerushalmi said at the news conference that he hired Gingrich not for her political connections or for her knowledge of trade, but rather on the basis of her sheer enthusiasm and her success in marketing.
The Israeli-based IEDC has some 30 marketing representatives worldwide, including offices in Japan, Korea, Germany and England. In the United States, the IEDC employs 14 marketing representatives, 10 of whom work solely on a commission basis, according to IEDC officials.
Most IEDC representatives receive a salary as well as commissions. Gingrich earns $2,500 monthly, plus commissions, according to news reports.
The free-trade zone being promoted by the IEDC is intended to operate free of government intervention. Products created there are to be exempt from most taxes and foreign currency regulations.
Although the IEDC developed and promoted the project, it still has to compete for the contract to establish the zone.
Yerushalmi was upbeat at the news conference about his company’s prospects for winning the contract.
“No one else spent $7 million on this project,” he said. “Moreover, we’re the only ones who have already attracted many multinationals to invest in it. We expect that in the next eight to 10 years we shall bring to the site $1.2 billion in investments and create some 40,000 to 50,000 jobs.”
Yerushalmi added that the IEDC had been approached to make a presentation about the Israeli free-trade zone “for the Saudi Arabia royal family, the Kuwait government and other Gulf states which I cannot mention yet.”
“We believe that this project will advance the peace more than any political process,” he said.
During her visit this week, Gingrich met with the mayors of Beersheba and the nearby city of Omer, as well as with local business and community leaders.
She also visited the Knesset, where she met with Knesset Speaker Shevach Weiss, Gedalya Gal, chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, and Michael Eitan, who chaired the committee that drafted the free-trade zone law.
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