Sara Netanyahu’s last crack at getting A-G to drop indictment set for today
Sara Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing before Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit is set for Wednesday.
In September, Mandelblit announced that he intended to file an indictment against Netanyahu in the “Prepared Food Affair,” subject to a special pre-indictment hearing usually reserved only for top public officials.
In the same announcement, Mandelblit said he was closing three other major criminal probes and three preliminary reviews against the prime minister’s wife.
Sources close to the case admitted to The Jerusalem Post in September that although there was unanimity about indicting Netanyahu in the Prepared Food Affair, there were differences of opinion within the prosecution about closing some of the other cases against her.
Though the attorney-general said that having a pre-indictment hearing is his customary procedure, technically Netanyahu does not have a right to such a hearing given to public officials since she holds no state office.
Regarding the Prepared Food Affair, from September 2010 until March 2013, the attorney-general has alleged that Netanyahu acted in coordination with Ezra Seidoff, former deputy director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, to falsely claim that the Prime Minister’s Residence did not employ a cook, even though it did at the time.
The two made this misrepresentation to circumvent and exploit regulations which state, “In a case where a cook is not employed in the official residence, it is permitted to order prepared food as needed.” The two hoped to obtain state funding both for the cook at the residence and for prepared food orders.
In this way, the two fraudulently obtained from the state NIS 359,000 for hundreds of prepared food orders.
Mandelblit, therefore, intends to indict Netanyahu for fraud with aggravated circumstances and breach of public trust.
The prosecution intends to indict Seidoff for the same offenses, while adding the offense of falsifying documents, the total fraud amount being NIS 393,000.
Furthermore, in 15 instances, invoices to chefs who were brought in from outside were falsified in order to circumvent limits on how much they could be paid. Seidoff allegedly directed the chefs, the house managers and Netanyahu’s secretaries to falsify these invoices.
Charges against Mrs. Netanyahu for these alleged falsifications are being withdrawn by Mandelblit, as there is insufficient evidence to prove that she knew about Seidoff’s and the others’ actions.
NETANYAHU’S LAWYER, Yossi Cohen, declined on Tuesday to comment on the pre-indictment hearing, saying he did not want to reveal his arguments beforehand.
However, at the time of the attorney-general’s announcement, Cohen told the Post that Meni Naftali and other Prime Minister’s Residence house managers like him are responsible – not Sara Netanyahu – for the food orders for which Mandelblit plans to indict her.
Regarding the Prepared Food Affair, Cohen and a spokesman for Netanyahu initially told the media in September that Naftali was responsible for the alleged illegal food orders in question. In other words, conceding that the orders might have been problematic, they would likely argue that Netanyahu did not place or even know about them.
The Post pressed Cohen to admit that Naftali only worked for Netanyahu for part of 2011 and 2012, so that blaming Naftali did not provide Netanyahu any defense from Mandelblit’s charges against her for 2010 and 2013.
Cohen then revealed that in their full defense, Netanyahu’s legal team would claim that the house managers in 2010 and 2013 also ordered the prepared foods without Netanyahu’s knowledge.
Separately, in interviews with Channels 2 and 10 in September, Netanyahu lawyers Jacob Weinroth and Cohen said that Mrs. Netanyahu would not seek a plea bargain and that she would claim ignorance of the regulation which set clear limits on prepared-food orders for the Prime Minister’s Residence.
The crux of the pre-indictment arguments will therefore be whether she can create enough doubt about whether or not she knew about the orders.
Many famous people have lost court cases after pleading ignorance of everything that was going on around them and being done by their underlings in plain sight. This is especially true with strong micromanaging personalities, which fits Netanyahu, according to labor court proceedings.
The three full criminal probes against Netanyahu which Mandelblit closed were the “Waiters Affair,” the “Electrician Affair” and the “Father’s Homecare Affair.”
Also on Tuesday, a three-justice panel of the High Court of Justice rejected a petition which sought to compel Mandelblit to indict Netanyahu without a pre-indictment hearing on the basis that he had no authority to give her the special privilege reserved for public officials. The High Court rejected the argument saying that although the attorney-general was obligated to give pre-indictment hearings to public officials, he could extend the privilege to others if he thought the circumstances were sufficiently sensitive, such as with the prime minister’s wife.