Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit made it clear Sunday evening to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense attorneys that they “must schedule a hearing within two weeks” for their client, following which the prosecution would decide whether or not to indict him on various charges of corruption.
Mandelblit also stressed that Netanyahu’s gripes regarding the large sums he would owe his defense attorneys is “not a consideration for me and will not affect the date of the hearing.”
According to the Ministry of Justice’s announcement Sunday, the AG “again made it clear to the prime minister’s lawyers, in a letter sent to them from his office, that if they wish to hold a hearing in advance of the decision whether or not to indict their client, they must coordinate no later than May 10 a date for this hearing, and said hearing must be scheduled for no later than July 10.”
The Justice Ministry noted that the PM’s lawyers had asked some two months ago that the prosecution refrain from sending them the investigation materials related to the suspects in these cases until after the elections, for fear of leaks to the media which could influence the outcome of the April 9 elections. Now the justice ministry is saying that, “as the defense attorneys were informed, the investigation materials are available to them at the offices of the State Prosecutor’s Office for Taxation and Economics in Tel Aviv as of April 10, 1919, the day after the elections, but so far there has been no request on their part to collect the material.”
The justice ministry added that “recently, following an appeal to them, the defense attorneys said they did not intend to collect the materials, as long as the issue of their fees had not been settled.”
Which is why the letter sent to Netanyahu’s defense attorneys Sunday by the attorney general’s senior assistant, Dr. Gil Limon, clarified that “the issue of settling fees is not our problem, therefore it does not justify any delay in transferring the core of the investigation materials to the Prime Minister or to his representatives, and in any case this will not affect the date of the hearing.”
The Attorney General also made clear that should the Prime Minister choose not to comply with the call to schedule to hold the hearing as aforesaid, then he, Mandelblit, would make a final decision on the indictments based strictly on the evidence before him.