AG says no evidence of sex offenses in probe of senior prosecutor

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said Monday there is no evidence on which to press charges against a senior lawyer in the State Prosecutor’s Office who was suspected of sexual offenses against another attorney.

A secret police investigation into allegations that Jerusalem district deputy prosecutor for criminal cases Uri Korb had harassed a female attorney under his charge was previously shelved after the attorney refused to cooperate with investigators. But the case was reopened last December when new information reportedly came to light.

That case has been closed, it was announced Monday. “In the end there was no evidence justifying investigating Korb as a suspect in a crime,” the the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

Although the probe did not find evidence of criminal charges, police investigators did recommend that the Civil Service Commission investigate Korb for possible disciplinary infractions related to the case. Mandelblit accepted the recommendation on the advice of the State Prosecutor’s Office, and Korb faced the disciplinary investigators on Monday.

Until he was placed on leave in December, Korb was involved in some of the most sensitive and high profile cases on the State Attorney’s docket, including the investigation into alleged financial improprieties by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He led the prosecution of former prime minister Ehud Olmert in the Talansky and Rishon Tours affairs.

In December, Hebrew media sources reported that the suspected harassment began three years earlier, and that the alleged victim stopped coming to work for a considerable period.

When she eventually returned to the office, she was summoned by Jerusalem District Prosecutor Nurit Litman.

According to sources from the Justice Ministry quoted by Channel 2, she explained her long absence by saying she had been overwhelmed by an unusually heavy work load and by private issues. The same sources said that she asked to be transferred to a different branch of the state prosecution.

Then-state prosecutor Moshe Lador was bring replaced by his successor Shai Nitzan at the time, and neither was informed of the attorney’s transfer.

When media outlets reported the suspicions in December, Nitzan sent a message to all employees urging them to complain if they experienced or witnessed a sexual offense.