Netanyahu confidant turns state’s witness
JERUSALEM — One of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest aides appeared ready to incriminate him Wednesday after agreeing overnight to become a government witness, the latest twist in a spiraling graft scandal that seemed to dim Netanyahu’s legal and political chances of survival almost by the hour.
The fast-moving police inquiry into whether Netanyahu, already battling separate bribery allegations, had provided official favors to Israel’s largest telecommunications company, Bezeq, in exchange for fawning coverage on the company’s online news site prompted one member of the prime minister’s party to ask him to step aside and opposition politicians to call for early elections.
Netanyahu, who insists he has done nothing wrong, has faced corruption allegations periodically almost since first becoming prime minister in 1996. But the latest could prove the most damning.
The new state’s witness, Shlomo Filber was director general of the Communications Ministry from 2015 until 2017, answering directly to Netanyahu, who at the time also held the title of communications minister. The ministry ruled or weighed in on a number of key regulatory decisions that provided enormous financial benefits to Bezeq and its controlling shareholder, Shaul Elovitch.
Filber, who was suspended from his post a few months ago as regulators from the Israel Securities Authority closed in, was arrested this week along with a number of other highprofile friends and confidants of Netanyahu, including Elovitch, members of his family and other senior Bezeq executives.
Filber’s testimony promised to connect the two main arms of the Bezeq affair: the Communications Ministry’s dealings with the company and the decisions taken by editors at Walla, its online news subsidiary, according to a person with intimate knowledge of the inquiry who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to seek a prison sentence for Filber.