Police to PM: Schedule time for questioning on graft allegations

The police asked Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides to coordinate a time for him to be questioned over suspicions of corruption, Channel 10 television said Friday, a day after reports emerged that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has approved a full criminal investigation into the prime minister.

Channel 10 said that the Prime Minster’s Office is trying to find a date that fits with Netanyahu’s schedule.

According to the report, the central suspicions against Netanyahu are breach of trust and unlawfully accepting gifts. As yet, the television said, there are no suspicions of bribery.

The Ynet news website, meanwhile, reported Friday that Mandelblit would only announce a formal criminal investigation once it was actually underway, in order to avoid any interference in the process and so that Netanyahu would not be able to prepare his version of events in advance.

According to Ynet, the same announcement would notify the public that Mandelblit decided to close some aspects of the preliminary probe into the affairs of the prime minister.

Channel 2 said Thursday night that the investigation would focus on reports that the prime minister illegally received large funds from a businessman in Israel and another overseas.

In his first reaction to the Channel 2 report, Netanyahu on Friday rejected the new corruption allegations as “baseless.”

“All these scandals have turned out to be baseless and so will the allegations being published in the media now,” the prime minister said in a statement.

“We keep repeating: This will come to nothing, because there is nothing,” said Netanyahu, who has been implicated in a slew of scandals in recent months but has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Channel 2 said Thursday that three top police investigators are being designated to lead the expected criminal investigation of the prime minister, including one whose expertise is in white-collar crime. The main case against Netanyahu has been dubbed “Case 1,000” by police, while a second, more minor case is known as “Case 2,000.”

Netanyahu is the prime suspect, and there are “marginal” suspicions against members of his family, the TV report said. A preliminary probe has been running for months, the report said, with some work carried out abroad. Some 50 people have already testified or been questioned over the various allegations, the TV report said.

Questioning Netanyahu will “require several sessions,” it noted.

In June, Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich gave his go-ahead to the hush-hush probe by the Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit, but demanded full cooperation on secrecy and that no details be leaked to the media, reports earlier this week claimed.

Mandelblit also reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutor’s office to look into allegations that Netanyahu accepted 1 million euros (about $1.1 million) from convicted French fraudster Arnaud Mimran in 2009.

Earlier this month, in an apparently unrelated case, there were calls for the prime minister to be investigated for his role in a Defense Ministry deal to purchase submarines from a German company partly owned by the Iranian government.