Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara attends a conference at the University of Haifa, December 15, 2022. (Shir Torem/Flash90)
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara says the appointment of Shas head Aryeh Deri as a minister despite his graft conviction is a “radical departure from the reasonable” in an opinion submitted to the High Court.
The court is considering several petitions filed against the government’s decision to make Deri interior minister and health minister, which argue that his 2022 conviction on tax fraud charges, as well as his conviction in 1999 on bribery charges and a third conviction on breach of trust from 2003, make his appointment “unreasonable.”
Baharav-Miara writes that Deri was found to be borderline unfit for a ministerial post in 2015 and 2016, even before his latest conviction. She says the Shas chief has “a pattern of criminal activity, most of it while serving in public office… which is instructive regarding how he relates to the rule of law.”
The government “did not give sufficient weight to the seriousness of an MK’s repeated violations which carry moral turpitude, and did not show serious weight being given to matters of ethics and the rule of law by those steering the regime,” she adds.
Interior and Health Minister Aryeh Deri at a ceremony of the incoming minister of Social Affairs Yaacov Margi (not seen), at the Social Affairs Ministry in Jerusalem on January 1, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/FLASH90)
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