Kickbacks and payoffs sully Likud's election bid Â

With four weeks to elections, a tide of sleaze swamps Sharon as violence continues to rage

Four weeks before Israel goes to the polls, the campaign trail is degenerating into a soap opera with daily instalments of sleaze and backbiting in the ruling right-wing Likud party.

The fraud squad is investigating charges of widespread vote-buying in the selection of parliamentary candidates and surveys published in two papers yesterday showed Ariel Sharon's party continuing to lose votes.

A Ha'aretz poll gave Likud 31 seats in the 120-member Knesset, down 10 in three weeks. "The Likud is injured, bruised and bloodied," said Yossi Verter, political correspondent on the liberal daily newspaper. "The Likud and Ariel Sharon are no longer immune. The Teflon has been severely cracked."

So far, defectors have turned to centre and religious parties. Labour, led by Amram Mitzna, a former general , is nine seats behind Likud in the polls.

The media, eager for scandal, is directing its invective at the Prime Minister and his two sons. In an investigative report yesterday, Yedioth Ahronoth, a mass-circulation daily newspaper, accused David Appel, a property developer, of agreeing to pay Gilad Sharon, the younger son, $400,000 (£250,000) in "consultancy" fees in return for political favours.

The older son, Omri, was said to have recruited 800 veterans of the pro-Israel South Lebanese Army as Likud members, despite the fact that they are not Israeli citizens. All were said to have voted for Mr Sharon in the leadership contest against Binyamin Netanyahu last November.

Mr Sharon was chosen in an open primary of 300,000 Likud members, while the 40 Knesset candidates were picked by the central committee, which has 2,900 members. "Vote contractors", some with criminal records, packed the roll with thousands of new members, answerable to their bidding.

Money, hospitality and job promises flowed freely and one minister, Tzahi Hanegbi, boasted he appointed 80 party loyalists to government posts. Police are investigating the award of a multimillion-dollar contract for security fences to a businessman linked to Likud. He did not submit a tender.

Mr Sharon tried this week to limit the damage. On New Year's Eve he sacked Naomi Blumenthal, a deputy infrastructure minister, who refused to answer police questions.

Ms Blumenthal is suspected of paying for 15 rooms for central committee members at a five-star hotel on the eve of the Knesset primaries. Benny Mazgini, one of her campaign managers, threatened to reveal details of Omri Sharon's alleged role in the Likud membership drive, claiming he put former convicts into the party. The Likud soap has reduced another scandal to a sub-plot. The central elections committee disqualified two Israeli Arab leaders, Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara, from the Knesset race on Monday and Wednesday respectively. They were alleged to have denied the Jewish identity of the state and consorted with its enemies.