Police have all but wrapped up two years of criminal investigations of suspected corruption by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The probes have yielded four thick files, three state’s witnesses, two police recommendations to indict on bribery charges and another on the way, and investigators are now putting the final touches on the heaviest case of them all, which is known as Case 4000.

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh will be leaving behind a clean desk when his term ends at the beginning of December. Police investigators have sent off two of the four cases to the State Prosecutor’s Office with recommendations to indict the prime minister. Case 1000 involves gifts to Netanyahu by Hollywood tycoon Arnon Milchan, and Case 2000 centers around a suspected quid pro quo deal with Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper publisher Arnon Mozes. Also in the pipeline are indictments of several top Netanyahu associates in Case 3000 involving Israel’s purchase of submarines from Germany, described by Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid as the gravest corruption scandal in Israeli history. Netanyahu himself is not yet a suspect in that affair. Case 4000 involving suspicion of bribery in Netanyahu’s past dealings with the then-major stakeholder of Bezeq telecommunications giant, Shaul Elovitz, will be handed over to prosecutors by the end of the year with a sweeping, unambiguous recommendation: Indict for bribery.

Netanyahu is well aware of this state of play, and he continues to issue his well-worn reactions, summed up in his comment that “there will be nothing because there is nothing." He is still counting on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, the former chief military advocate general who was his close aide as Cabinet secretary for three years. Nonetheless, he is beginning to have doubts. He understands that Mandelblit has “crossed the Rubicon,” as various people privy to Mandelblit’s thinking attest. Netanyahu, who tends to make mountains out of molehills and suss out potential threats in the making, is gearing up for the first quarter of 2019, sure to be the most decisive period of his political and perhaps personal life.

According to the most likely estimated timeline, once all the files reach the desk of State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, he and his staff will have to decide what recommendation to pass on to Mandelblit. They are expected to adopt the likely police recommendations to indict Netanyahu for bribery in Case 4000, but they may take the recommendations in Case 1000 down a notch to charges of breach of trust. The recommendations in Case 2000 are still uncertain, but it, too, will most likely result in bribery charges. The files will then move to the final arbiter, Israel’s top law enforcement official. Mandelblit, by most assessments, will make his decision within the first three months of 2019.