The state prosecution filed a revised indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday providing more specifics in the public corruption cases against him, including listing around 150 incidents of media bribery.
Whereas the original indictment had lumped the prime minister with his wife, Sara, and his son, Yair, regarding actions taken to carry out the Bezeq-Walla Case 4000 media bribery scheme, the amended indictment is more careful to segment who was involved in each act.
Last month, the Jerusalem District Court instructed the state prosecution to distinguish between the different activities of the Netanyahu family members so that defense lawyers would be better able to rebut the allegations.
In addition, the prosecution listed in the amended indictment 315 incidents in which various Netanyahu family members or other intermediaries of the prime minister demanded that the Walla website give them more positive coverage.
The 315 incidents related to 230 specific requests, such that in some instances there were numerous requests relating to a single incident.
For example, the prosecution said that “The inquiries include demands to improve the media coverage of Netanyahu and his family, to increase the amount of exposure positive news items received or to delete, downplay or change the headlines of negative news items about Netanyahu or his family.”
Further, the incidents refer to demands to give negative coverage to Netanyahu’s political opponents and to prevent an interview with Netanyahu from being aired.
Crucially, the indictment clarified that even as the individual who took action was separated out of the indictment, Netanyahu knew that his family members were systematically contacting Walla owner Shaul Elovitch or his wife Iris for positive coverage.
All of this was part of Elovich’s agreement to bribe Netanyahu with positive media coverage in exchange for the prime minister influence on government communications policy to benefit Elovich’s other company, Bezeq.
Netanyahu’s spokesman responded, “the state prosecution had trouble finding more than 10 instances in which the prime minister communicated with Walla over four years, an average of about two communications per year, at a time when Walla had around 10,000 articles about the prime minister.”
The spokesman added that Netanyahu’s communications with Walla was a tiny fraction of those made by other politicians to newspaper owners, editors and reporters.
In addition, the spokesman said that any other communications attributed to the prime minister were standard contact from his spokesman’s office related to major events, such as passing on his speech against the Iran nuclear deal at the US Congress.
Further, the statement again attacked the entire concept of media bribery as a nonexistent category.
Netanyahu’s lawyers are due to file a final written response to the indictment by January 11 with the final hearing prior to calling witnesses set for January 13.
Witnesses are expected to be called starting in February, right at the height of the impending election season.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.