The Lion’s share of corruption

The rabbit hole only gets deeper with each passing day as the investigation into government corruption piles up its victims. Monday’s front pages are covered with the face of Moshe Lion, the one-time candidate for Jerusalem’s mayor’s office and former director of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Early Sunday morning police revealed that officers had arrested a senior official close to Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman on corruption charges, Yedioth Ahronoth reports. Only later did it become clear that it was Liberman confidant and defeated mayoral candidate Lion.

Yedioth Ahronoth cites the police report saying that Lion is suspected of orchestrating the transfer of bribes in a case connected to the transfer of state funds to the Tamar regional council. Lion denied the charges against him, saying his actions were done within the legal framework of his job as an accountant.

Lion was investigated by the police’s corruption unit for eight hours and afterwards released to house arrest for five days, the paper says.

Apparently the investigators have solid testimony, possibly even an audio recording, which ties Lion to the charges against him, which Haaretz speculates might be the reason he was released to house arrest.

“He was investigated and cooperated completely and throughout the investigation,” sources close to Lion told Yedioth Ahronoth. “The investigators treated him in a practical and fair manner, and at the end of the investigation he agreed to house arrest.”

Although the story about Lion’s arrest makes front page news across the spectrum, Israel Hayom buries it beneath political intrigue in the Shas party and sticks the half-page story on Page 5.

Israel Hayom reports that Lion, who currently serves on the Jerusalem municipal council, was meant to be on the Yisrael Beytenu list for the upcoming Knesset elections. Haaretz says that Liberman intended for him to serve as one of the senior positions in the list, even as a minister. Israel Hayom reports that another regional council leader was also interrogated on suspicion of transferring bribes, but the person’s name wasn’t released to the public. The paper calls the ballooning corruption scandal “indeed one of the largest the country has known,” and says the police said they plan to take dozens more suspects in for questioning.

Haaretz reports that the new arrests in the corruption case were made possible because of the police’s enlistment of a senior state’s witness, who has remained anonymous. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that apparently another suspect agreed to become a state’s witness, raising the number in the bullpen to three.

In an unrelated corruption case, police arrested six suspects, including one of the deputy CEOs of the Israel Electric Corporation, on suspicion of bribery, Israel Hayom reports. Yakov Hain and the others are suspected of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Siemens Company.

Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz also play up a recording made six years ago in which the spiritual leader of the Shas party, the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, can be heard saying that the party’s current leader, Aryeh Deri, was evil and a thief, and that he didn’t heed Yosef’s council. The recording conveniently surfaced as the rift between Deri and Eli Yishai, the former head of the party, turned into open conflict, with Yishai breaking away from Shas and starting his own party.

Meanwhile, Channel 10, one of Israel’s two main news outlets, said it will be turning off its lights and closing the door in the coming three days unless it receives help from the government. The channel blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also serves as the communications minister, for not helping find a solution to the problem, and had a photo of the prime minister on the screen along with its message of protest after shutting down its broadcast at 10:30 p.m.

The channel hasn’t been issued a new operating license for the coming year, in large part due to the fact that it’s run up a bill of NIS 36 million in the past year, Haaretz reports. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the channel said it rounded up the necessary funds to cover its debts.

On the United Nations front, Israel Hayom reports on Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz saying that Israel needs to seriously consider dismantling the Palestinian Authority should the UN Security Council pass an “offensive, hostile, one-sided resolution on the issue of a Palestinian state.” He further said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “is an enemy no less dangerous to Israel than Hamas.”