Israeli Academic: Law Not Clear Cut on PM 'Gifts'

Jerusalem, 26 January, 2017 (TPS) -- An Israeli academic says that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion yesterday that “receiving gifts is legal” is not necessarily accurate.

Media reports Thursday indicated that police are moving towards indicting the prime minister over allegations that he failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Netanyahu has acknowledged the gifts but insists he did not break any laws.

But Dr. Amir Fuchs, researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute and lecturer in the Politics and Communication Department at the School of Government and Social Sciences at Hadassah Academic College, said the law isn’t clear.

“You are dealing here with a very complicated matter with a lot of different definitions and interpretations,” Milchan told TPS by phone. “ There are no clear-cut standards.”

Fuchs said there are essentially three  charges that could potentially result from the current round of investigations, and particularly from Netanyahu’s admission that received expensive cigars, wines and other luxury items from Milchan.

“First of all there is ‘bribery,’  which is clearly defined as a gift given with the goal of influencing the actions of an official. The fact that the gift is not in the form of money is irrelevant: As long as the gift has a monetary value it can be considered for bribery. The only question that then remains is whether the receiving party acted on that bribe.

To illustrate, Fuchs cited the case of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was originally acquitted of bribery by the Jerusalem District Court in the Talansky and Rishon Tours affairs but was later convicted of breach of trust in the Investment Center case in 2012.Olmert received  a one-year suspended sentence and a fine of NIS 75,000.

Later, in 2015, when the Talansky case was retried, was Olmert found guilty and sentenced to 8 months in prison.

Apart from bribery, second law that appears to apply in the Netanyahu case is “breach of trust,” a situation in which a gift giver may not have intent to bribe the receiver but which creates a severe conflict of interest for the receiving party.

“This occurs when the person giving the gift could potentially seek to influence decisions made by the public official,  immediately or in future,” he said.

Fuchs added that because the crime of “breach of trust” is not properly defined in Israel, it is difficult to convict a public officials on this charge. He said that breach of trust is usually tried when there is not enough evidence for a full-scale bribery case. The maximum sentence for breach of trust is 3 years in prison, but convictions are rare.

“Not all conflicts of interest are necessarily criminal offenses, and the text on this matter is extremely obscure. In order to meet the criteria, a jury must define the conflict of interest to be an essential breach of public trust, integrity, or public health,” Fuchs said.

Lastly, there is the “Gifts Law” which also addresses the issue of gifts to public officials but is not as serious as bribery of breach of trust. The issue in most cases of public officials will be whether there was bribery or breach of trust.

“Overall, the decision of an indictment ultimately remains contingent on the sole consideration of the Attorney-General,” Fuchs said, “but I think Israel in a good place with regards to the bribery law. For breach of trust, we are on the bad side of things – the law is poorly defined compared to the US and Canada,” Fuchs concluded.

Ilana Messika contributed to this Report