PM to be questioned over ‘Bibi Tours’ affair
Netanyahu faces comptroller over alleged double-billing of overseas trips when finance minister; one report says he initiated hearing next week
Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be questioned by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira next week over alleged irregularities in the financing of overseas trips for himself and his family when he was finance minister over a decade ago.
Shapira, who is nearing completion of a report into the prime minister’s alleged double-billing of travel expenses, is to question Netanyahu in light of new information on the affair known as “Bibi Tours,” Channel 10 television reported Thursday.
The Walla website reported that Netanyahu had initiated the hearing.
Shapira launched a criminal investigation into the affair in 2013, but Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein closed the probe a year later, citing lack of evidence.
The allegations first came to light during a 2011 Channel 10 report by journalist Raviv Drucker, in which he claimed Netanyahu had traveled abroad at the expense of various businessmen and foreign Jewish groups during his time as foreign minister and a Likud member of Knesset.
Drucker said that Netanyahu did not receive approval from the Knesset Ethics Committee for all of the flights funded by foreigners, and concluded that the Netanyahus were guilty of accepting illegal gifts.
At the time, Netanyahu’s lawyer, David Shimron, said that one of the flights in question — to New York in 2006 — was funded by the Knesset, while the flight for his wife, Sara, was funded by a Jewish group. Shimron claimed Mrs. Netanyahu’s flight was registered under her husband’s name, indicating double-billing that did not happen.
Netanyahu has never been questioned, or called in for investigation, over the allegations.
