A-G: PM might need to return $300,000 tycoon donation
Sources close to Netanyahu: Mandelblit trying to prevent a fair trial, he’s trying to topple PM at any price
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit told the High Court of Justice in a legal brief on Sunday that the State Comptroller Committee might need to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pay back the full $300,000 his family received from a tycoon family member without authorization.
Sources close to Netanyahu slammed the decision, saying, “all of these actions of the attorney-general show his purpose is to prevent the prime minister from getting a fair trial.”
In a Ynet report, the sources were quoted saying that “Mandelblit lost all breaks,” and that he is determined to “topple the prime minister at any price, and he is speeding toward him like a train that lost control.”
In early 2019, the previous members of that committee had ordered Netanyahu to return the full $300,000 he received from cousin Natan Milikowsky, because he had obtained it without permission from the committee (which must approve special fund transfers to public servants) and because he and Milikowsky have serious and potentially problematic financial ties.
However, in summer 2019, the committee’s membership was changed by new State
Comptroller Englman.
For a year, the new committee flirted with allowing Netanyahu to receive donations despite the previous committee having rejected him three times.
Finally, the committee rejected Netanyahu’s request for receiving NIS 10 million in donations on July 2 after Mandelblit made it clear that he would view such a move as illegal.
Still, the committee gave Netanyahu favorable treatment on a related issue on July 2, saying he need only return $30,000 out of the $300,000 in donations he received from Milikowsky for his legal fight without approval.
Explaining this part of the decision, the committee said that the other $270,000 had gone to Sara Netanyahu’s legal defense, which was permitted since she is a private citizen.
Good government NGOs criticized this part of the decision and brought the issue back to the High Court to compel Netanyahu to return all of the funds.
Mandelblit’s legal brief on Sunday essentially agreed with the Movement for the Quality of Government in Israel that the circumstances in which the funds were given to Sara Netanyahu could be seen as an indirect way to give funds to the prime minister himself.
If the purpose of the funds was determined to be to help the prime minister and using his wife as a loophole, then the committee should order Netanyahu to return all of the funds.
The attorney-general criticized the committee for not addressing the issue, and told the High Court that the committee must express a factual finding on the issue regarding what was the purpose of the funds.
Sources close to Netanyahu said that this level of intervention by the attorney-general into the comptroller committee’s decision was improper. Noting that Mandelblit had referred the issue to the committee, the sources blasted Mandelblit for second-guessing the committee’s decision and said it showed he was aligned against Netanyahu now across the board.
Ironically, Mandelblit had angered the prior comptroller committee by permitting Netanyahu to receive an NIS 2 million loan from tycoon Spencer Partrich.
Netanyahu then used this point against Mandelblit, saying he was being inconsistent – though Mandelblit’s point had been a loan was inherently different than a donation with no strings or repayment requirement.
Beside the $300,000, the overall funding issue for the prime minister is still very much alive as his lawyer, Micha Fettman, quit in mid-July due to a lack of payment and even his new lawyer, Yossi Segev, told the Jerusalem District Court on July 19 that he was not sure yet whether Netanyahu
Matanyahu
THE BILL Joseph has been pushing is necessary, he said, because the High Court of Justice determined – in a case that remains under gag order – that Israel can continue to sell weapons to countries that are not under a UN Security Council arms embargo.
Joseph cited China and Russia as vetoing those embargoes, and he slammed Israel-China ties.
In light of China putting an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in forced-labor camps, Joseph said, “We shouldn’t do business with a country representing that kind of evil. Ties with such people endangers Israel.”
“We are against any business activities, weapons or not, with any country that is murdering or torturing innocent civilians – and China [fits] this definition,” he said.
Joseph lamented that the matter is not discussed enough by the Israeli public, which he attributed to military and court-ordered censorship of the information.
“The military denies the public the knowledge,” he said. “The public doesn’t want to be part of mass murder. I don’t want a child in South Sudan to be killed with my weapons.”
Joseph often refers to his religious beliefs as being the engine behind his activism. He quotes from the Bible, arguing that in Genesis, Abraham would not take a gift from the King of Sodom because he was a murderer, and as such, Israel should not take money from killers.
“I believe the day will come when the people of Israel say, ‘My God, what have we done!’” Joseph said. “I am doing what I am doing because I am a believer that we, the Jewish people, love humanity. We went through hell in our lifetimes, and we love humanity. That is who we are as a nation.” •