Likud pays big money to polling firm headed by state witness in Netanyahu trial
TV report says Direct Polls, whose head Shlomo Filber gave contradictory testimony in ex-PM’s case, has received some NIS 300,000 from his former boss’s party
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has paid hundreds of thousands of shekels to a polling firm led by a former aide who has been a state’s witness against the ex-premier in his ongoing trial, Israeli television reported Tuesday.
According to Channel 13 news, Likud has so far shelled out some NIS 300,000 (over $85,000) to Shlomo Filber’s “Direct Polls,” with additional work lined up before the November 1 elections, Israel’s fifth since April 2019.
“The company worked with a variety of bodies and parties in the last four election campaigns, and is doing so again in the current election campaign,” Direct Polls said in response to the report.
“We don’t give out information on our clients.”
There was no comment from Likud.
The Haaretz daily reported that the contact between Likud and Direct Polls, as well as the payments, did not begin until Filber’s testimony wrapped up in June.
Filber, a former Netanyahu confidant who served as director-general of the Communications Ministry during his premiership, testified in Case 4000, considered the most serious of the three cases against Netanyahu. The former premier is charged with fraud, breach of trust and bribery in the case.
Filber offered seemingly contradictory testimony regarding a meeting in which he claimed the then-prime minister instructed him to actively benefit Shaul Elovitch, the then-controlling shareholder of the Bezeq telecom company. Netanyahu is suspected of doing so in exchange for positive coverage from the Bezeq-owned Walla news site. Filber’s flipflopping testimony was seen as a potential blow to the prosecution’s case.
The prosecution — which at one point sought to declare Filber a hostile witness, though it ultimately relented — maintains that the allegations regarding the context of the meeting stand.
Netanyahu is also on trial in two other corruption cases, facing charges of fraud and breach of trust relating to alleged illicit benefits he received from billionaires and a quid pro quo deal with a newspaper publisher. He has claimed without evidence that all the charges were fabricated in a political coup led by the police and the state prosecution.
