Minister in charge of police said named in secret criminal dossier
Investigators reportedly gathered evidence on Gilad Erdan and others in document detailing suspicions against MKs
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is named in a secret police document detailing suspected criminal activity by lawmakers, Channel 2 reported Tuesday.
The existence of the dossier on all 120 Knesset members, including suspicions of criminality by several, was revealed Monday on Channel 10, though the report did not detail which lawmakers were suspected of crimes.
Intelligence on the suspected crimes was from the period that Erdan served as communications and environmental affairs minister in the previous government. It wasn’t clear what allegations were in the file.
There was no immediate response from Erdan, whose purview has included the police since taking over the ministry in 2015.
Erdan was never investigated formally, the report noted. Like the information collected on dozens of MKs, the secret file remained in a drawer for years and was never given to the prosecutor’s office.
The Justice Ministry refused to comment on the report or the existence of the document.
The secret document was compiled by Israel Police in 2014 and contains extensive information on all of the Knesset’s 120 members at the time, including evidence regarding alleged offenses committed by dozens of them, the Channel 10 news report revealed Monday.
The document, reportedly drawn up on the instructions of the head of police’s Investigations and Intelligence Department Meni Yitzhaki, is said to include information on alleged corruption cases and other crimes which could form the basis for criminal investigations.
The Channel 10 report noted that Yitzhaki’s predecessor Yoav Segalovich had expressly forbidden the creation of such documents, out of concern that they could be exploited by interested parties to target politicians of their choosing. (Segalovich joined the Yesh Atid party, led by Yair Lapid, last month)
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on Monday confirmed the document’s existence.
Mandelblit, who took office in January, told Channel 10 the file was intended for internal review purposes, to monitor whether there was information on probes into politicians that he had not been made aware of.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Tuesday asked to meet with Israel Police chief Roni Alsheich to discuss the file and its existence.
“The concentration of information about the MKs raises doubts and questions,” Edelstein said.
In a statement to Channel 10 on Monday, police did not confirm or deny the existence of the document, saying only that Yitzhaki’s policy was “to check any intelligence information professionally and thoroughly and to carry out any procedures mandated [by his job] to the fullest.”
The police denied systematically gathering information against Knesset members in order to check whether they had been involved in wrongdoing, and stressed that any investigation against a lawmaker requires the authorization of the attorney general.
They added that all information-gathering was done according to law and “with appropriate sensitivity.”
They stressed that any evidence that raised substantial suspicions against a member of the Knesset was immediately sent to the attorney general or the state prosecutor for review.
