Israel Police on Wednesday morning released for publication the news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attorney and cousin, David Shimron, is one of the suspects being investigated this week in the submarine affair. Shimron, who also represents businessman Mickey Ganor, who brokered the submarine deal between the giant German corporation ThyssenKrupp AG and the State of Israel, was placed under house arrest Monday morning and is being interrogated by the major crimes unit Lahav 433.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom, who served as commander of the Navy at the time of the purchase, was placed under house arrest Tuesday night and is also being interrogated. The investigators are trying to figure out whether Marom was behind opening a bank account in Cyprus, where large sums of money were allegedly transferred by representatives of the German shipyards, to be distributed as bribes to a number of senior Israeli security officials as well as to Shimron.
At the center of the submarine affair, a.k.a. Case 3,000, stand two acquisition deals of Dolphin class submarines and Sa’ar 6 class warships ships. Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon objected to the submarine purchase from ThyssenKrupp AG on two main grounds: 1. The Navy does not need six submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and the IDF could use the half a billion or so each one of the redundant subs would cost for more urgent expenses; 2. The Navy should not tie itself to ThyssenKrupp AG for parts and maintenance for the next couple of decades, as prescribed by the submarine contract, when it could shop around for them and get a better price (especially since it’s unclear just how much of ThyssenKrupp AG is owned by Iran).
The investigation became criminal in February and last Monday police detained six suspects, including Ganor, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Avriel Bar Yosef, and attorney Ronen Shemer, on suspicion of involvement in the submarine affair.
Ganor, who mediated the submarine deal, was remanded to detention until Thursday. Ronen Shemer works for Ganor. Bar Yosef served in the past as deputy head of the NSC and was appointed by Netanyahu to head the NSC, but the appointment was canceled after it became clear that he was the subject of a criminal investigation. His detention was also remanded until Thursday.
Netanyahu’s direct ties to the scandal are, obviously, the focus of everyone’s attention in Israel, seeing as such a connection could alter the country’s political future most radically (as it did when the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced corruption charges and had to resign well before the first gavel came down in the first judicial hearing of his case). The fact that Shimron, a very close acquaintance of the PM, is squarely at the center of the investigation, does not bode well for Netanyahu.
Here is how Netanyahu is tied to the affair so far: In 2014, the former legal counsel of the Defense Ministry, Ahaz Ben-Ari, sent the Ministry’s Director General Dan Harel a letter saying, “I was contacted by attorney David Shimron, who represents the ThyssenKrupp consortium, who asked if we stopped the tender process in order to renegotiate with his clients, as we have been asked by the Prime Minister.”
Shimron has since claimed that he never mentioned the PM when approaching Ben-Ari – and investigators will have to decide whether or not they believe him. But this, so far, is the smoking gun pointed at Netanyahu.
When the submarine scandal was first exposed, by Channel 10 News, the PM’s office released a statement saying, “the first time the Prime Minister learned that attorney Shimron represents a business entity connected with the Navy’s procurement project was when Channel 10 contacted us requesting our response to their report on the subject.”
According to the statement, “Attorney Shimron never spoke to the Prime Minister about submarines, ships, or anything else related to his clients. Attorney Shimron did not talk to the Prime Minister about this client, nor about any other client.”