In recent years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been placing enormous pressure on Israel’s high-level law enforcers and gatekeepers, with the goal of silencing or taking control of them. It's a life-or-death struggle for both sides.

Netanyahu appointed the police commissioner he wanted to emasculate the investigative wing in 2015, but the commissioner, Roni Alsheikh, soon came to his senses and became impartial and determined to see justice done. In the attorney general's office Netanyahu had a one-person dream team in the form of Yehuda Weinstein, who had served as the Netanyahu family’s personal attorney and gave the prime minister everything he wanted. However, Weinstein finished his term in 2016 and his replacement Avichai Mandelblit, another close associate of the prime minister, shows worrisome signs of independence. Mandelblit is working on the prime minister’s criminal files slowly but with determination. In the state comptroller’s office, Netanyahu had managed to place another convenient person seven years ago: retired District Judge Joseph Shapira. But here, too, the figure with a personal relationship with the Netanyahus transformed into a true public servant rather early in his tenure and refused to bend. Shapira then published reports regarding Netanyahu’s various affairs and policies.

Now comes the rectification: Shapira’s term of office ended and Matanyahu Engelman was elected due to Netanyahu’s considerable pull. Engelman is not a judge, as is the norm for this position, but an accountant with strong right-wing affiliations. True, the state comptroller has no direct or immediate influence on Netanyahu’s political or personal fate. Nevertheless, Engelman is entrusted with the most precious thing to the Netanyahu family: money.

If we are to judge by the initial weeks of his tenure, Engelman is delivering the goods. Rather than taking the time and energy to learn the system, he immediately went about dismantling the state comptroller’s office. He's disrupted power structures, changed priorities and brought new faces into the body whose duty it is to audit and oversee the public sector and the governing institutions.