Police urge bribery, fraud charges against Netanyahu

JERUSALEM — Israeli police recommended Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on bribery, fraud and other charges, accusing him of trading regulatory favors for fawning news coverage, in what is potentially the most damaging of a series of corruption cases against him.

It was the third time this year that police have urged that Netanyahu face criminal prosecution, and it dealt another blow to his teetering governing coalition, which narrowly averted collapse last month, clings to a one-vote majority in Parliament and has been edging closer to calling early elections.

Netanyahu, who has dominated Israeli politics for a decade and continues to dominate all potential challengers in opinion polls, now must await the decision of the attorney general, whom he appointed, on whether to indict him in all three cases.

That may take months, and Netanyahu could well win another term as prime minister before he is formally charged — perhaps bolstering his chances of remaining in office while facing prosecution.

In a statement, Netanyahu called the recommendations unsurprising because of previously published leaks, and repeated his contention that they would come to nothing. He noted that such recommendations have no legal weight, and that other recommendations against public figures had been rejected recently.

Netanyahu is not accused of getting rich himself, but of enriching the country’s biggest telecommunications company, Bezeq, at the public’s expense and for the sake of his image and that of his wife and family.

Between 2012 and 2017, police said, Netanyahu “intervened in a blatant and ongoing manner, and sometimes even daily,” in coverage at Walla, a news website owned by Bezeq, ensuring “flattering articles and pictures” were published and “removing critical content” about him and his family.

Police said Netanyahu and his associates sought to sway Walla’s hiring of senior editors and reporters. In return, police said, Netanyahu, who personally oversaw the communications ministry from 2014 to 2017, rewarded Bezeq with lucrative concessions, including approval of its merger with Yes, a satellite television company, despite the objections of lower-level ministry officials.

Police said they had seized about $32 million from those involved during the investigation, known as Case 4000.

Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition in the Israeli Parliament and a former justice minister, called for immediate elections to replace Netanyahu.