Netanyahu aide reportedly held secret meeting with Bezeq tycoon on merger deal

A longtime aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly met privately in 2015 with the controlling shareholder of Bezeq to discuss a merger deal that would net the telecommunications mogul millions of shekels.

According to a Channel 12 news report Friday, the meeting between then Communications Ministry director general Shlomo Filber and Bezeq’s Shaul Elovitch took place at the latter’s home in Tel Aviv without any legal advisers present. The two reportedly discussed Bezeq’s proposed merger with satellite TV company Yes, which Elovitch stood to profit from.

Both Elovitch and Filber are central figures in Case 4000, which involves suspicions that Netanyahu advanced regulatory decisions benefiting Bezeq in exchange for positive coverage from its Walla news site.

Filber, a Netanyahu confidant who was appointed director-general in 2015 when the premier headed the Communications Ministry, became a state’s witness in the case last year.

The report said investigators learned of the secret meeting because afterwards Filber corresponded on WhatsApp with Eli Kamir, Elovitch’s assistant.

“I understand from Shaul that you had a good meeting,” Kamir reportedly wrote.

Filber: “We made progress, there are understandings waiting for the boss’s approval… it was a good meeting and the wine was excellent… it came with figs, grapes and cheese — delish!”

Kamir: “A real pleasure. Now that I know what happened there’s a real opportunity for your boss to come up with some real news.”

Police investigators later found a note in the home of state’s witness and former Netanyahu confidant Nir Hefetz that described the outcome of the meeting. At the end of the note, apparently from Kamir and Elovitch, Hefetz had written “this is what was agreed upon with Momo [Filber].”

Police nicknamed the meeting “The figs and wine summit.”

Netanyahu is suspected of an illicit quid pro quo with Elovitch — the majority shareholder in Israel’s biggest telecom firm Bezeq, and the owner of the Walla news website — that continued for about four years, until early 2017. The alleged understanding saw Elovitch ensure favorable coverage of Netanyahu at Walla, Israel’s second largest news site, alongside critical coverage of Netanyahu’s rivals, especially in the 2013 and 2015 election periods. In return, Netanyahu allegedly intervened in regulatory and other business decisions that benefited the Israeli tycoon by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The probe is the most serious of the three investigations into the prime minister, as it includes a proposed bribery charge for both Netanyahu and Elovitch. Netanyahu is facing charges, pending a hearing, in all three cases.

In 2012, the Communications Ministry set out a roadmap for the so-called Wholesale Market Reform, which it began implementing in February 2015. According to the plan, once the market was competitive and the various rivals were ensuring state-of-the-art service with competitive prices for internet, phone and digital TV services, Bezeq would be allowed to merge with its subsidiary units — allowing for the firm, which would inevitably be hurt by the competition, to cut some of its costs.

After winning elections in 2015, Netanyahu, also communications minister at the time, booted out the ministry director-general Avi Berger, who had backed the reforms, and instead installed Filber, a long-time ally and his campaign manager.

The report of the secret meeting between Filber and Elovitch follows a flurry of recent media reports on the investigation.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan testified to police that he suspected his removal as communications minister in 2014 was an effort to torpedo reforms he was advancing that would have weakened Bezeq, according to a Channel 12 report Thursday.

Erdan also said Netanyahu had never interfered in his reforms, and the transcripts of his testimony show he had based his suspicions at the time on Elovitch’s boasting, but had no evidence implicating the premier.

The Kan public broadcaster published Wednesday a partial transcript of Netanyahu’s interrogation about his ties to Elovitch, in which he reportedly told investigators that he had only a casual relationship with the businessman.

It followed the airing of transcripts the night before in which Filber reportedly described how Netanyahu indicated to him that he should soften any changes in telephone tariffs and also quickly approve a merger of Bezeq with its Yes satellite TV subsidiary, a development that eventually went ahead and is said to have earned Elovitch hundreds of millions of dollars.

Filber told investigators Netanyahu had called him to complain that his suggestions were not progressing at the pace he wanted, Channel 12 reported Wednesday.

A Tuesday report from the network said that Filber testified to police that the prime minister personally told him that Elovitch was not happy with the way reforms in the communications and internet sector were going, and indicated to Filber that he should do something about it.

Netanyahu’s personal Twitter account tweeted a response to the report describing Channel 12 as a “propaganda channel” and saying that the case “is a blood libel that is not based on facts or documents but rather on the lies of state witness Momo [Shlomo] Filber.”

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s lengthy description of Netanyahu’s alleged illicit dealings with Elovitch took up the majority of a 57-page document released in February in which Mandelblit set out the allegations that prompted him to announce a criminal indictment against the prime minister, pending a hearing.

Netanyahu is scheduled to attend his own pre-indictment hearing in the case on October 2-3. These will also cover two other corruption probes in which the prime minister faces additional charges of fraud and breach of trust.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing in all the cases against him.

Netanyahu has regularly slammed Channel 12 for its extensive coverage of the multiple criminal cases in which he is a suspect, and has singled out for criticism a number of its reporters, one of whom — Guy Peleg — it was reported Friday will receive a security attachment following threats against him on social media.

The Central Elections Committee on Friday rejected a petition from Netanyahu’s Likud party to bar news outlets from publishing transcripts and documents from Netanyahu’s corruption investigations ahead of national elections next month.

In its petition to the elections committee, Likud charged that the recent reports on the probes against Netanyahu were meant “to sway the election” and requested an injunction blocking further publication by the media of investigatory materials.

Also Friday, Netanyahu’s Likud party said the prime minister’s lawyers sent a letter to the broadcast authority, Channel 12 news and its reporter Peleg asking the network to look into what they alleged was the journalist’s intentional misquoting of transcripts to harm the premier.

Peleg’s reporting on graft accusations against Netanyahu has previously drawn criticism from the prime minister and he was one of a number of journalists targeted in an election campaign by Likud earlier this year.