Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit wrote to Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Sunday telling him to hold off on the ministry’s probe into Case 3000 pending a Justice Ministry review to ensure that it will not interfere with the prosecution’s anticipated legal proceedings.
The ministry issued a statement later stating that it was awaiting word from Mandelblit and would get to work as soon as possible “according to the attorney-general’s professional guidelines, and as stated at the outset, without impeding the [ongoing] criminal proceedings.”
Last week, the ministry committee’s chairman and former Tel Aviv District Court Judge, Amnon Straschnov, announced that a first hearing would be held on Tuesday.
Although Mandelblit promised that his office would speedily move to review the committee’s proposed plan for probing the Submarine Affair, it was clear that hearings would not be able to begin as planned.
Under law, any additional state investigations into an issue that is also the subject of a criminal case must defer to avoid interfering with the progress of criminal proceedings.
The Submarine Affair is an ongoing case involving a multi-billion dollar submarine deal with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG conglomerate over several years. Some politicians allege involvement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite investigators officially clearing him of wrongdoing.
In December 2019, Mandelblit said he would likely indict top officials close to Netanyahu and former senior naval officers for bribery after they pushed for the purchase of additional submarines and surface craft from ThyssenKrupp despite them being considered surplus to requirements.
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Among those close to Netanyahu already implicated are lawyer David Shimron, a confidant and cousin of Netanyahu; David Sharan, a former chief of staff at the Prime Minister’s Office; Avriel Bar-Yosef, a former deputy national security adviser, and former navy chief Eliezer Marom.
Mandelblit has concluded that there was no proof that Netanyahu knew about the scheme, and at worst, he pushed for purchasing the vessels under suspicious circumstances.
Gantz’s inquiry was designed to determine whether Netanyahu’s conduct in the affair was ethical.
Mandelblit is expected to allow the Defense Ministry probe to go ahead but he will impose conditions to ensure that certain testimony or evidence will not be used or taken in a way that could sabotage the pending criminal cases.
The probe is a major source of political tension between Gantz and Netanyahu and it could determine whether another round of early elections may be held in the coming months.
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