2 December 2018

Israeli Police urges fraud charges against Netanyahu (for the third time)

The Israeli police recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted of bribery, fraud and trading regulatory favours for fawning news coverage. The Israeli campaign is said to have put the news portal Walla at the service of Netanyahu, who is facing the third fraud scandal of this kind. This time, her wife Sara and Shaul Elovitch, the main shareholder of the Bezep group, to which Walla belongs, are also accused of fraud. Police says Netanyahu, who was in charge of the communication government portfolio between 2015 and 2017, regularly intervened in the writing of Walla’s content and influenced the appointment of journalists and editors. He has now to await the decision of the attorney general on whether to indict him in all three cases, a decision that can take months. Netanyahu has already denied the accusations, and said: “The witch hunt against us continues […] the investigation has been a match-fix. The recommendations aren’t surprising and the timing isn’t surprising”, referring to the upcoming elections.

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