Attorney Richard Horowitz on Bibi's bribery charges
Netanyahu is accused of breach of trust for allegedly accepting expensive gifts from a friend, Arnon Milchan, in exchange for helping Milchan with personal matters (Case 1000). A second breach of trust charge (Case 2000) alleges that Netanyahu was ready to support a law to undercut a competitor of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in exchange for more favorable coverage. He is also accused of bribery in Case 4000, in which he allegedly exerted influence to facilitate a merger that conferred a financial windfall to another personal friend.
To better understand the peculiarities of Israeli law in these cases, we turned to a longstanding legal source, Richard Horowitz of Richard Horowitz & Associates. Horowitz is licensed to practice law in New York, Washington, D.C., and Israel, has worked as a private investigator, and is a recognized expert in the areas of corporate intelligence, fraud, and international investigations, including money laundering. He is also a Yeshiva University graduate who reached the rank of captain in the IDF.
They’re going to confront him with the evidence they plan to use at trial to convict him. What he’s up against is a system that’s weighted against the accused for two reasons. First, the Israeli statute says ‘whoever takes a bribe’ but doesn’t define what a bribe is. Second, in Israel bribery can be proved by a presumption.
Evidence that the two people involved knew what they were doing and what they were giving and taking was a bribe. Israeli jurisprudence allows bribery to be established by a presumption that anyone who’s in contact with a public official on official business and gives him anything of value has given him a bribe, and a presumption that the public official knew he was receiving a bribe. I don’t see why this presumption should override the presumption of innocence, as in “innocent until proven guilty,” but that’s how Israeli jurisprudence works, and it’s not being reported in the press.
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