JERUSALEM – Israeli prosecutors on Sunday released an amended deed in which detailed charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appear in a corruption case in which he is accused of favoring a powerful media magnate.
Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three corruption cases. One claims that Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the owner of the Bezeq telecommunications company in exchange for positive coverage on his popular Walla news website.
In response to a request from Netanyahu’s lawyers for more details, Israeli prosecutors released a letter on Sunday alleging that there were 315 incidents of Walla making the coverage more favorable to Netanyahu and his family. They said there were indications that Netanyahu was personally involved in 150 of the incidents.
It reads the requests include giving more time or publicity to positive articles about Netanyahu and his family, changing the headline and reducing or even removing unfavorable stories. It also included alleged requests for negative coverage from Netanyahu’s opponents.
The document contains all 315 alleged incidents, which allegedly prompted several requests to publish flattering articles and photos of Sara, Netanyahu’s wife, to hide reports of embarrassment of expenses and personal information about the Netanyahu family and attempts to dissuade his opponents embarrassed. At the time, Bezeq’s controlling shareholder Shaul Elovitch was quoted as saying that Netanyahu would not approve lucrative business deals for the company if negative articles were published.
On January 17-19, 2013, for example, it was said that a Netanyahu employee persuaded Elovitch to publish stories stating that the wife of Naftali Bennett, head of a rival religious party, worked in a non-kosher restaurant. A few weeks later, Netanyahu, through the same collaborator, allegedly pressured Walla to remove critical articles about a lace dress his wife wore to the oath of the new parliament and replace it with favorable reviews. The site agreed to both requests, it reads.
On another occasion, Elovitch allegedly ordered Netanyahu, at the request of Netanyahu, to stop a live broadcast of a protest by Netanyahu’s opponents during the country’s 2015 election campaign.
Netanyahu’s trial began last year and is expected to resume next month. He denies all charges against him and says he is the victim of a witch hunt organized by a hostile media, police and prosecutors.