Minister at center of graft probe said to spirit mom out of police station during grilling
Social Equality Minister May Golan, who has refused to submit to police questioning, claims she took her mother home from the station due to her poor health
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In the latest twist in a broad corruption investigation into a cabinet member and her staff, Social Equality Minister May Golan was accused Thursday of spiriting her mother away from a Tel Aviv police station in the middle of her questioning.
According to reports in the Haaretz daily, Channel 12, Ynet and other outlets, Golan’s mother, Rimona, turned up for questioning at the station on Thursday after three days of police trying to locate and summon her. Citing a police source, Haaretz said that Rimona did not cooperate with investigators as they tried to question her for two hours.
The reports said Rimona then asked to go to the bathroom. After exiting the room, she met up with her daughter, the minister, who had arrived at the station, and who then escorted the elderly woman off the premises while shouting at police officers.
Officers apparently did not attempt to forcibly prevent the minister from removing her mother from the station.
The police did not issue any statement on the incident.
Ynet said police had sought to question Rimona Golan since a number of documents and assets at the center of the corruption investigation are in her name.
The minister herself has refused to submit to police questioning.
A statement from Golan’s office asserted that the minister had escorted her mother from the station due to her poor health.
“After an hour of questioning, [Rimona] was upset and shaking all over, and Minister Golan immediately took her home to recover and brought in a doctor,” the statement read, adding that medics called to the scene had recommended that she avoid stress due to raised blood pressure.
The statement also accused police of leaking details of the investigation and asserted that “interrogators refused to allow Minister Golan and the lawyer who came with them to ensure that the questioning would not cause irreversible damage to [Rimona’s] health.”
Golan is suspected of fraud, misusing public funds for private purposes, creating fictitious positions in the Social Equality Ministry, and concealing sources of funding. The case cracked wide open on Monday when police raided her office and arrested six of her associates.
She was accused of enabling widespread nepotism and of dubious fundraising activities in a TV report that first aired in January, and police were granted the go-ahead a month later to open an investigation into the minister.
According to an Israel Police statement on Monday, Golan is accused of using nonprofit organizations and government systems as a “tool for illegally extracting funds.”
Hebrew media outlets reported on Wednesday that one of Golan’s arrested associates, attorney and former parliamentary adviser Ehud Gabay, had been close to signing a state witness agreement before seemingly backing out.
At a court hearing on Monday, Golan accused police of “threatening innocent people just because they worked and [currently] work for May Golan the ‘Bibist,’” referring to her support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Golan told the press that she would only “show up to any questioning” once her associates were released. To a group of reporters gathered there, she insisted that she had “nothing to fear and nothing to hide.”
The Times of Israel Community.