Finally: Indictment against MK Haim Katz as part of a plea agreement - Fine and suspended sentence

The State Attorney's Office filed an indictment against MK Haim Katz as part of a plea agreement signed with him, according to which he will be fined and given a suspended sentence only. As part of the plea bargain, the offense of fraud and breach of trust attributed to Katz was reduced to the offense of conspiracy to achieve a kosher purpose by improper means. This, at the end of negotiations that lasted a year between his defense attorneys and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and the State Attorney's Office. Katz, who will be represented by attorneys Noyet Negev, Yana Fogel and Tuval Buch, also waived his request for immunity from the Knesset.
Mandelblit informed Katz's lawyers today that he will not ask the court to impose a disgrace on MK. However, if the court decides to convict Katz, it can still determine that the offense for which he was convicted has disgrace - which will lead to the termination of his membership in the Knesset immediately, according to law. The court may determine that the offense has disgrace on its own initiative, or on the recommendation of the Attorney General or the State Attorney's Office. The issue of defamation was not part of the plea agreement signed with Katz.
Among other things, Mandelblit's decision regarding the disgrace was influenced by an opinion written by former Attorney General Eliakim Rubinstein in the case of former Ramat Gan mayor Zvi Bar. In this case, Bar was charged with the same offense as the one in which Katz was charged - conspiracy to achieve a kosher goal by prohibited means. In the course of the legal proceedings, Rubinstein wrote an opinion stating that bar bar should not be imposed and the court accepted his position.
At a hearing on Katz's request for immunity last year, Mandelblit said the conflict of interest attributed to Katz "was not far from bribery." According to the indictment, in 2010, when Katz was chairing the Knesset's Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, he "summoned capital market trader Moti Ben-Ari as an expert to promote a bill in repaying bonds in troubled companies, but did not disclose information to committee members. "About his personal and economic ties with Ben-Ari and about Ben-Ari's economic interest in advancing the law."
About two years ago, the ombudsman decided to file an indictment against Katz for fraud and breach of trust due to his ties with Ben-Ari, but the Knesset ruled that he has immunity from prosecution - expired upon dismissal. The Ministry of Justice, after hearing again of Katz's lack of power and after "weighing all the relevant material in the matter, found that it was correct to change the facts of the indictment and the offense section formulate a question." From prosecution.
Katz said after the amended indictment was filed that "after we brought the matter fully before the Attorney General, he recognized that the amendment (to the law) was made with the aim of benefiting the general public, that there was no fault in his promotion in the Knesset and that I did not make a personal profit." "The charge against me is regarding the information I had to bring to the Knesset committee members in the circumstances. I take full responsibility for this. For the past five years I have paid a high personal and public price, because the process is the punishment, and I found it appropriate to reach an agreement and put the affair behind me."
Omar McKays, director general of the Movement for Morality, which petitioned against the ombudsman's delay in filing the indictment against Katz, said that the arrangement against him was particularly lenient. "The arrangement does not include the offense of fraud and breach of trust included in the original indictment, and about which the ombudsman himself said that it was done at the high threshold, and that it was not far from the bribery offense. "There is concern that the ombudsman chose to facilitate with MK Katz, contrary to the public interest and the seriousness of the actions, due to his fear of having to return to the Knesset again (for the process of requesting immunity from Katz, NB) if he did not reach an agreement."
According to the indictment, Katz has close friendships with businessman Ben-Ari, an activist in the capital market who was an advisor to Akutel. In mid-2010, the indictment states, Katz advises Ben-Ari on legislative moves "designed to deal with the wave of 'haircuts' in public companies by strengthening the status of bondholders vis-à-vis controlling shareholders." Ben-Ari came up with an idea to change legislation - which Katz submitted As a private bill on his behalf, and also improves Ben-Ari's condition.
The indictment states that "the defendant saw the law as an important social amendment and he worked to promote it in the Knesset with the aim of benefiting the general public. The defendant was aware that the bill also had an impact on Ben Ari's economic interests." After passing the law in a preliminary reading, he was directed to the committee headed by Katz in a way that allowed him to control the law, and the indictment states that he acted "to ensure its promotion as quickly as possible."
For most of the committee's deliberations, Katz summoned Ben-Ari as an expert in the field of bonds, and he acted in the committee to mobilize support for the law. And without the content of the amendment to the law being Ben-Ari's idea, in January 2012 the Knesset enacted the law.