Ex-Communications Ministry director general Shlomo Filber, a former close confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu, begins his long-awaited testimony in the former prime minister’s corruption trial in Jerusalem.
“He was an object of my admiration from a very young age, one of the greatest leaders we had; I think so even today,” Filber says of the ex-premier at the start of his testimony. Filber is a key witness in Case 4000, in which Netanyahu is accused of advancing regulatory decisions that immensely benefited Walla owner Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder in Bezeq, in exchange for what amounted to editorial control over Elovitch’s Walla news site.
Filber says he has known Netanyahu “for almost 25 years, we have good professional chemistry, but we never developed social ties beyond that.”
Filber says there “was a high level of trust between us; in general Netanyahu delegates authority” to people he trusts and relies on. Filber says that when he was director general of the Communications Ministry, “I could get 3-4 calls a day” from Netanyahu.
The witness also tells prosecutors that he never lied once during any of his police interrogations in the case.
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From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
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