Comptroller’s report shows impact of Sara Netanyahu on PMO operations
Report addresses insufficient cell space for prisoners, high rate of police detentions
By YONAH JEREMY BOBIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara react following the announcement of exit polls in Israel's election at his Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv(photo credit: REUTERS)
Without naming her, a report by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Monday showed the massive impact Sara Netanyahu’s corruption conviction has had on the Prime Minister’s Office over the past five years.Ezra Seidoff was the last permanent deputy director-general of the PMO for operations, which made him the head of a vast organization for purchasing. In 2015, he was forced into indefinite leave when he and Sara Netanyahu came under investigation for fraud.Seidoff’s and Sara Netanyahu’s troubles started in significant part due a 2015 report by the previous comptroller, Joseph Shapira, who did name names.In June 2018, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit filed an indictment against the prime minister’s wife for fraud with aggravated circumstances and breach of public trust.He alleged that from September 2010 until March 2013, Sara Netanyahu acted in coordination with Seidoff, the other defendant in the case, to falsely misrepresent that the Prime Minister’s Residence did not employ a chef.According to the allegations, Netanyahu and Seidoff made misrepresentations to circumvent and exploit regulations that stated: “In a case where a cook is not employed in the [prime minister’s] official residence, it is permitted to order prepared food as needed.”The two hoped to obtain state funding both for the chef at the residence and for prepared food orders. In this way, the two allegedly obtained NIS 359,000 from the state for hundreds of prepared food orders. By September 2019, both Sara Netanyahu and Seidoff had been convicted of reduced corruption offenses related to lesser amounts of money. But the damage to the PMO was done.Throughout almost the entire probe, trial and plea-bargain negotiations, no one filled Seidoff’s post.According to Monday’s comptroller’s report, since Seidoff went on leave, the number of public offerings for PMO work is down and the number of irregular processes for PMO work has jumped.
There was one PMO temporary deputy director-general for a short period in 2018-2019. But it seems the overall impact of the Sara Netanyahu trial on PMO purchases and processes has been to shove them further into the dark and underground.For an office with about 1,000 employees and an NIS 1.7 billion budget, only a miniscule 12% of projects went through a public bidding process.Another deputy PMO position for manpower also has been left mostly unfilled.Regarding prisoners’ rights, the report flags a blatant violation by the prisons almost three years after a June 2017 blockbuster decision by the High Court of Justice.In that decision, the last issued by Elyakim Rubinstein before his retirement, the Israel Prisons Service was given a January 2019 deadline to ensure that every prisoner had a minimum of four square meters of cell space, as required by international law.The state not only blew through that deadline, but the comptroller reported on Monday that even as of this month – nearly 18 months after the deadline and three years after the order – only 50% of prisoners have been given the four-square-meter minimum cell space.Rubinstein told The Jerusalem Post he was confident the High Court would continue to monitor the issue. But it is significant that in March 2018, the state had already asked the High Court to extend the deadline until 2027.While the High Court denied the extension, at the rate that the IPS is moving more than two years after that request, it appears that either the High Court is unwilling to hold the IPS’s feet to the fire to get it to move faster or that it is unable to do so.In a related issue, the report said over the past 20 years, the number of cases in which the police have tried to hold defendants in prison until the end of their trial has risen from 11% of the time to 35%.There is an interesting debate about whether the police have made some reforms to mitigate this trend, condemned by many legal scholars and former High Court justices.Some statistics produced by the police in recent years present the start to lowering these numbers. But the comptroller’s report indicates that the numbers produced might have been “baked” or incomplete statistics.In fact, the comptroller said more than 123,000 cases of police arrests in general were dropped from the publicly presented statistics.The report also said in 66% of cases, the police did not notify the Public Defender’s Office to get unrepresented suspects a lawyer until after they were questioned.Another law-and-order aspect of the report noted that in the fight against organized crime from 2016-2018, the police seized NIS 4.2 billion and received court orders to confiscate NIS 454m. of those funds.The comptroller praised law enforcement for increasing the percentage of seizures by 220% during that time period.At the same time, he criticized that in 2019 only 40% of the funds that could have been confiscated were because of lack of manpower in the state prosecution.In some mega cases this has meant that NIS 800m. have not been seized, and NIS 300m. of seizures in grave tax cases have been held up.
