No, Saudi King Salman did not finance Netanyahu's campaign

A story in the Middle East Observer, allegedly based on the Panama Papers, has gained a lot of traction for its claim that Saudi King Salman donated $80 million to Prime Minister Netanyahu's 2015 election campaign.

Isaac Herzog, member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Israeli Labor party, revealed that Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz financed the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“In March 2015, King Salman has deposited eighty million dollars to support Netanyahu’s campaign via a Syrian-Spanish person named Mohamed Eyad Kayali. The money was deposited to a company’s account in British Virgin Islands owned by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire and businessman, who has allocated the money to fund the campaign Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”, Herzog cited a leaked Panama Paper.

The story is still being shared on social media:

Panama Papers: King of Saudi Arabia secretly donated $80M to Netanyahu's Israeli election c… https://t.co/80OXgHaARA pic.twitter.com/wWRHKYURQK

— Boing Boing (@BoingBoing) May 9, 2016

#PanamaPapers: Saudi king secretly donated $80M to Netanyahu's Israeli election campaign https://t.co/f8LenM5vJq pic.twitter.com/nlsoBDgeI8

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) May 9, 2016

But according to sources that seem to be in a decent position to know, the story is not true.

(Update): A spokesperson from Isaac Herzog’s office reached out to Al-Masdar News on Monday to confirm that this quote was fabricated.

Labor leader Hertzog denies to me unsane websites' reports that he had said that Panama Papers would reveal Bibi got money from Saudi King

— Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) May 9, 2016

And there goes President Obama's foreign policy legacy.... /sigh