Aide suspected of trying to bribe judge in probe of Netanyahu’s wife.
JERUSALEM • The mushrooming corruption scandal plaguing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took a surprising new turn Tuesday, with an allegation that one of his closest advisers had sought to bribe a judge into dropping a criminal investigation involving the prime minister’s wife.
At the same time, Israeli police said they had arrested several of Netanyahu’s friends and confidants, as well as top executives of Bezeq, the country’s biggest telecommunications company, in a widening inquiry into whether Netanyahu had traded official favours for favourable news coverage.
The new allegations significantly raise the level of political and legal peril the prime minister faces, suggesting that he or some in his camp could be exposed to charges of obstructing justice.
Netanyahu was already embattled after police recommended a week a go that he be prosecuted for accepting what they said were bribes worth nearly $300,000 from wealthy businessmen seeking government favours.
Late Tuesday, Netanyahu released a video denying the allegations, calling them “hallucinatory” and “baseless” and part of a “campaign of persecution against me and my family that has been going on for years.”
Opponents from the Israeli left and centre are demanding that Netanyahu resign or declare himself “incapacitated.” Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party called in vain for a no-confidence vote and said Netanyahu should appoint a temporary prime minister from within his own party. “Israel deserves a full- time prime minister who is not engaged in anything else,” Lapid said.
Another of Netanyahu’s main challengers, Avi Gabbay of Labor, said the prime minister had “become a liability for the citizens of Israel.”
At the centre of the new allegations is Nir Hefetz, a close adviser to the prime minister. In 2015 he was a top strategist for the Likud Party’s successful election campaign. Late that year, according to police and Israeli news reports, Hefetz, working as the Netanyahu f amily ’ s media adviser, passed a message through an intermediary to Israel’s commissioner for prosecutorial oversight, Judge Hila Gerstel: Would she drop a corruption case against Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, in exchange for being named attorney general?
The case was not dropped, and Gerstel did not become attorney general.