“I believe nothing will come of this,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at a Dec. 31 news conference during a visit to Brazil. “This” is a reference to three affairs in which police suspect Netanyahu of corruption: Case 1000 involves gifts he allegedly received from wealthy businesspeople; in Case 2000 he allegedly conspired with a news publisher for favorable coverage; and in Case 4000 he is suspected of granting regulatory favors to a media tycoon, also in return for favorable coverage. Netanyahu added, "The hearing doesn’t end until my side is heard. And therefore, it is not logical to open a hearing process before elections if you can’t finish it before elections.”
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit reportedly promised members of a senior judiciary forum recently that he would make an all-out effort to complete studying the police findings and recommendations in all three cases as quickly as possible in order to decide whether to indict Netanyahu, pending a hearing. According to a Jan. 1 report on Channel 2, Mandelblit agreed that issuing a decision prior to the elections was a “public duty” so that voters can go to the polls fully informed.
However, no mention has been made of why Mandelblit allowed Netanyahu to evade a criminal probe into a far more serious case — Case 3000.
Case 3000 stems from a contract estimated at $2 billion that Israel awarded the German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp in 2016 for the purchase of three submarines and four warships. Police have recommended indicting several senior figures in the affair on suspicion of accepting bribes, money laundering and other crimes. A petition submitted Dec. 18 to the Supreme Court by a public watchdog is demanding that the attorney general, the state prosecutor, the head of investigations at the Israeli Police and the prime minister himself provide answers to a series of tough question emanating from the affair by Jan. 6. The petitioners represent the Movement for Public Integrity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting public corruption that includes among its leading figures Brig. Gen. Yaakov Or, who headed the Defense Division in the State Comptroller’s Office and previously served as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Another leading activist was Shlomo Gur, the attorney who served as director general of the State Comptroller’s Office and before that of the Justice Ministry.
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