Public security minister was unaware of probe into his party
Yitzhak Aharonovitch kept in dark about police investigation into corruption allegations surrounding his Yisrael Beytenu faction
Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch was not informed that his own Yisrael Beytenu party was under police investigation for over a year until a wide-scale roundup of dozens of suspects early Wednesday morning,
Police did not tell Aharonovitch about the probe, which cast suspicion on members of the Yisrael Beytenu faction, among them Deputy Interior Minister Faina Kirshenbaum.
Aharonovitch only found out about the case early in the morning as cops were rounding up some 30 suspects, including the director of a ministry, believed to be involved in the affair.
A terse Avigdor Liberman, who heads Yisrael Beytenu, declined to comment on the scandal at a conference in Tel Aviv where he delivered an address on policy.
“Beyond what I have heard in the news I don’t know anything — I have nothing to add beyond what was put out as a response by Yisrael Beytenu,” Liberman told reporters.
Before delivering his speech Liberman, trying to be upbeat, warned the audience that he had nothing to say about the matter.
“If there are disappointed people here they should leave the hall now,” he quipped and then, in a jibe apparently directed at the media which had made the corruption story headline news throughout the day, he added, “I hope that you are all in paradise.”
In a story that rocked the country’s political scene, police announced Wednesday morning that an extensive corruption investigation had yielded dozens of suspects, among them Kirshenbaum plus a former Israel Beytenu party minister, a ministry director, and a host of senior public officials.
Detectives from the Lahav 433 serious crimes and anti-corruption unit swooped down on the homes and offices of multiple public officials early Wednesday amid suspicions of bribery, fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate documents and money laundering.
The allegations implicated Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, which rejected the case as a “witch hunt” aimed at impeding the party’s campaign ahead of the March 2015 election.
Kirshenbaum dismissed the allegations and said she had been summoned to a police interrogation to take place later Wednesday.
The investigation was launched amid suspicions that the officials had “conspired in a calculated manner to advance their personal and public interests and to receive money for personal use, while committing various crimes in a manner that significantly impeded the administration of their areas of governance,” police said in a statement.
Investigators suspect that large sums of money were inappropriately transferred to non-government organizations and various other groups. In return, the organizations allegedly made nepotistic appointments, as well as circulating some of the money back to public service officials in the form of cash payoffs and benefits.
“The covert investigation revealed a calculated method wherein the suspects and their representatives unlawfully transferred, using their powers as public officials, large sums of public funds to [various] bodies and authorities, in exchange for large benefits for them or their associates, including appointments, payments and more,” the police statement said.
Some of the suspects were to be arraigned at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Kirshenbaum denied the allegations in an interview with Channel 2 Wednesday morning.
“I have no idea what’s going on, and I want to look into it,” she said. “I was told to come in for an interrogation and I will be questioned today. They said nothing to me. I have no idea why I’m being questioned, other than what I’m hearing in the media. I’m certain of my integrity.”
In a statement, Yisrael Beytenu said the arrests were part of a pre-election political witch hunt.
“As in every election since the establishment of Yisrael Beytenu in 1999, police haven’t forgone highly publicized arrests and investigations against members of the party,” the statement said. “If the investigation had been announced before the announcement of early elections or after them, one might have thought that there was a point to it, but the fact that it was done, again, during elections reveals more than anything else the intention of those who are behind the matter, which is meant to harm Yisrael Beytenu.
“We are confident in the innocence of the people, and that just as in previous occasions, once the media hullabaloo dies down, it will be established that there is nothing behind these publications other than the intention, destined to fail, to damage Yisrael Beytenu.”
Israel Police Chief Yohanan Danino rejected Yisrael Beytenu’s accusations, denying that the investigation was politically motivated.
“The investigation has been going on for more than a year and the transition to an open investigation is a result of evaluating the status of the evidence and for solely professional reasons,” he said. “It was done in consultation with the attorney general and the state attorney and after all factors were considered, including the sensitive election period.”
