JERUSALEM (AFP) - Millionaire US businessman Morris Talanski admitted on Sunday that he gave financial contributions to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert but insisted he had believed they were intended for legitimate purposes.

"I never thought in any way that the money I gave was illegal or wrong," the 75-year-old Jewish-American financier told Israel's private Channel 10 television in his first public comments on a scandal facing Olmert.

"I deny emphatically that I had in mind to do business in Israel... It was never my purpose. It never crossed my mind, and it is far away from the truth," Talanski said.

"Olmert was the prince of the Likud. He was respected, and I respected him... I assume the money was for his election campaigns," he said of the prime minister's former political party.

Olmert has been dogged by scandals since he took office in 2006 and is facing calls from the opposition to resign.

Last week, he said he would quit if he was found guilty of any wrongdoing, after the justice ministry said he was being investigated over suspicions he unlawfully received payments from Talanski.

The justice ministry has said that Olmert received huge amounts of money in the 1990s, during his time as mayor of Jerusalem and as industry minister.

"Citizens of Israel, I look you in the eye and I say to you, in no uncertain terms, I have never taken a bribe, nor have I unlawfully pocketed money," Olmert said at a hastily convened press conference on Thursday.

But he acknowledged that he had received financial contributions for various election campaigns from Talansky, insisting however they were not illegal.

Anti-fraud investigators grilled Olmert for an hour on Friday, while his former office manager, Shula Zaken, has been questioned four times.

"My generation, who remembers the Shoah (Holocaust), sees the state (of Israel) as a place where there is integrity," Talanski said, adding that he was cooperating with the police.

On Sunday, ministers from Olmert's current centrist party, Kadima, backed his right to fight the latest suspicions of graft against him and vowed the probe will not disrupt the government.

"The prime minister will overcome this affair. Every citizen should be allowed to prove his innocence," said Housing Minister Zeev Boim, echoing remarks made by Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit.

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