Police Commissioner Hints Sufficient Evidence to Indict Netanyahu

Chief Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh stated on Sunday that the investigations against Prime Minister Netanyahu are on the last to final lap and that they would be ending very soon.

Alsheikh had ordered the country’s special police unit, Lahav 433,  to investigate the Prime Minister on fraud charges while maintaining a total secrecy no leaks to the media. Thus, he did not explicitly say that the police recommended to the State Prosecution that the Prime Minister  should be indicted but hinted that it was the direction to which the investigation was headed.

These past few weeks, the investigation Prime Minister corruption and fraud charges focused on allegations according to a Hebrew-language Channel-2 report that Netanyahu had agreed to a quid pro quo deal with Yedioth Aharonoth publisher Arnon (Noni) Mozes. Based on a taped conversation between Netanyahu and Moses, the Prime Minister would have allegedly agreed to support legislation to limit the circulation of Israel Hayom, a free newspaper that has cut sharply into the profits of Yedioth Aharonoth, in exchange for positive coverage in the latter paper.

Minister of Environmental Protection and Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin was summoned to the police to provide his testimony on the case, as chairman of the coalition during the previous government, this past Thursday.

Investigators are reportedly also looking into allegations that Netanyahu received around 1 million Euros from Arnaud Mimran, a French businessman currently serving eight years in prison for fraud. During his trial, Mimran claimed to have donated the money to Netanyahu during the 2009 Israeli election campaign, a claim which was consistently denied.