Police suspect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to broker the sale of the Walla news website to American billionaire Larry Ellison, Channel 10 reports.
According to the report, the prime minister was trying to help the ailing news site’s owner, Shaul Elovitch, avoid bankruptcy. His intervention reportedly came to pay Elovitch back for flattering coverage of the premier on his news site.
Netanyahu was confronted with this claim during his last police questioning, Channel 10 says, as were his confidants who are being investigated in a separate case, David Shimron and Yitzhak Molcho.
The new details refer to the so-called Bezeq affair, also known as Case 4000, in which investigators suspect Netanyahu advanced regulatory decisions benefiting Elovitch, the controlling shareholder in the country’s largest telecommunications firm — despite opposition from the Communication Ministry’s career officials — in exchange for positive coverage from Elovitch’s Walla news site.
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