Netanyahu reportedly downplayed ties to owner of ‘crappy’ Walla news site

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told investigators probing major graft suspicions against him that he had only a casual relationship with a tycoon whom prosecutors say directly benefited from the premier’s actions as part of an illicit agreement.

The Kan public broadcaster published Wednesday a partial transcript of Netanyahu’s interrogation about his ties to businessman Shaul Elovitch in the probe police have dubbed Case 4000.

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.

“I can describe to you my relationship with Elovitch as being like my relationship with Aharon Barak,” Netanyahu reportedly said, referring to the former president of the Supreme Court.

“The same few meetings — four or five meetings — the same few meals with wives,” the prime minister told police. “There is no meeting at family events, there is no friendly connection of the type that I have with other people.”

Netanyahu noted that at the time he was also communications minister and naturally had contact with all the country’s major publishers and media figures.

The prime minister ridiculed the accusation that, via Communication Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber, he sought to benefit Elovitch by influencing a major reform in the telecom industry which would have created more competition for Bezeq, necessarily impacting its profits by dropping tariffs.

The prime minister claimed it was “absurd” to suggest that “you can take all the professional bodies and give them all the runaround, and that the one who is doing it is Filber. What nonsense.

“And your whole claim is that I did this because of that fekakta, insignificant site [Walla],” Netanyahu reportedly said, using a Yiddish word for “crappy.”

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 indictments, pending a hearing, in all three cases.

Channel 12 on Wednesday published transcripts of the interrogation of Filber, who is now a state witness in the case. He claimed that Netanyahu sought to remove Communications Ministry deputy director-general Haran Levaot because he was standing in the way of policies that would benefit Elovitch.

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, a Netanyahu ally who was appointed to head the Communications Ministry in 2015 after the prime minister abruptly fired his predecessor, told investigators Netanyahu had called him to complain that his suggestions were not progressing at the pace he wanted, Channel 12 reported Wednesday. The prime minister, he said, kept repeating two sentences to him.

“Who is this Haran? What don’t you replace him?” Filber quoted Netanyahu to investigators and noted that the phone call from him came at a time when Bezeq was negotiating the reformed tariffs.

“It was clear to me that someone had put crosshairs on his head,” Filber said of Haran.

Filber said he told Netanyahu that “it isn’t simple, you can’t just fire a person from one day to the next without a process — I am dealing with the issue.”

A statement on behalf of Netanyahu called Case 4000 a “blood libel.”

“Case 4000 is a blood libel that relies on the testimony of state witness Shlomo Filber,” the statement said and claimed that “before the police applied brutal pressure and forced him to lie about the prime minister,” Fliber had clearly stated that Netanyahu did not speak with him about the Bezeq-Yes merger.

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.

A pre-indictment hearing for Elovitch and his wife, also a suspect, was held earlier this month.

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.

Case 1000 involves accusations that Netanyahu received gifts and benefits from billionaire benefactors. Case 2000 revolves around accusations Netanyahu agreed with Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper publisher Arnon Mozes to weaken a rival daily in return for more favorable coverage from Yedioth. Mozes underwent his own pre-indictment hearing earlier in the month.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing in all the cases against him.