Overruling own office, ombudsman okays PM’s loan to pay legal bills
Matanyahu Englman ignores rulings of Permits Committee, which repeatedly rejected Netanyahu’s requests to receive funds from wealthy associates
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Wednesday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to receive funding for his legal defense from his friend, American businessman Spencer Partrich.
Some of the money Netanyahu is expected to receive from Partrich will go to pay back $300,000 he received from his cousin, businessman Nathan Milikowsky, and which the Permits Committee in the State Comptroller’s Office has said he must return.
The issue of the funding of Netanyahu’s legal defense in the three criminal cases he faces has been contentious. Over the past year, the Permits Committee has three times rejected Netanyahu’s demand to be allowed to receive financial aid — worth up to $2 million — for his legal expenses. It ordered him to return funds he had already been given by Milikowsky.
But former comptroller Yosef Shapira was told by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in June that he could approve a loan request despite the Permits Committee’s decision. Shapira, though said to be supportive in principle, did not take action before leaving office.
Englman’s office said Wednesday he had approved a loan that complies with market standards, on the condition that Netanyahu sign a declaration with the attorney general to prevent a conflict of interest.
The Movement for Quality Government called Englman’s action “a strange and suspicious decision.” It contended that in cases of alleged corruption such as the ones the prime minister is a suspect in, “we would expect a far more stringent attitude towards [possible] conflicts of interest.”
It accused Englman of “causing serious harm” to the status of the Permits Committee while “hurting public trust in the government.”
In denying Netanyahu the financial help, the Permits Committee had said it was inappropriate for wealthy benefactors to pay for the prime minister’s legal defense in a criminal case relating to his alleged receipt of gifts from such benefactors in Israel and abroad, the so-called Case 1000.
It also said such aid should be sought only if the public servant needs the financial help — and asked Netanyahu to submit an assessment of his assets and net worth. The prime minister refused to do so.
Three members of the committee resigned in August amid a dispute with Englman over the matter. Channel 13 reported on a July meeting between Englman and the committee’s members, in which the comptroller lashed out at them over their demand that Netanyahu return money to Milikowsky, calling it an overstep of the committee’s authority.
Later in August, former judge Sara Frish revoked her acceptance of Englman’s offer to chair the committee. She said she’d “agreed to the appointment based on the knowledge that the committee acts from a foundation of legal and ethical criteria” but “I have come to the conclusion that the committee has become a ball on the political playing field. It is not my place.”
The State Comptroller’s Office has reportedly seen a dramatic shift in its function under Englman.
Haaretz reported in July that Englman plans to scale back the office’s probes into public corruption and focus on the post’s traditional and uncontroversial role as the polite internal critic of the state bureaucracy.
The new plans include closing the department in the comptroller’s office responsible for corruption investigations, as well as the introduction of positive feedback into reports on state bodies.
Englman, an accountant by training and former education executive who ran the prestigious Technion institute of technology and the state’s top university regulator, the Council for Higher Education, was sworn in to the job on July 1. He is the first comptroller in three decades who is not a former judge.
His appointment, passed by the Knesset in June with the backing of Netanyahu’s coalition, comes in the wake of two comptrollers, Micha Lindenstrauss and Yosef Shapira, who transformed the post into a key corruption watchdog — drawing praise from non-governmental watchdog groups, but also criticism from some politicians and officials for expanding the role of the office.
The State Comptroller’s Office, which is also the government’s office for public complaints, serves under the aegis of the Knesset and has authority to examine all agencies of government. In part due to Lindenstrauss’s efforts, the agency has grown in recent years into a significant oversight body with hundreds of attorneys and accountants whose reports often lead to administrative and policy changes.
