Deri expected to show up at Sunday cabinet meeting despite High Court ruling — report

Shas leader Aryeh Deri is expected to show up at tomorrow’s cabinet meeting, despite the High Court of Justice ruling that he cannot serve as a minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

After Wednesday’s bombshell ruling, if Deri doesn’t resign from his twin cabinet roles as interior minister and health minister, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is legally required to fire him.

The High Court ruled that Deri’s dual appointments were “unreasonable in the extreme” in light of his recent and past financial crimes, and that Deri had misled a magistrate’s court into thinking he would retire from political life in order to evade a determination that his recent tax fraud conviction carried “moral turpitude.”

Deri was also convicted and incarcerated for taking bribes during a previous stint as interior minister in the 1990s.

Channel 12 news reports that Netanyahu’s coalition is looking to draft a law that would stipulate that tax offenses cannot carry the designation of “moral turpitude.”