Occupied Jerusalem: An Israeli labour court on Tuesday awarded compensation to a former maintenance man in the official residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accepting the worker’s claims of abusive terms of employment at the hands of Netanyahu’s wife, Sara.
The court award was the latest blow to the Netanyahus, who are under scrutiny over the use of public funds and the management of their official and private households, and long-standing accusations that they have been living the high life at the expense of others.
The Netanyahus have denied any wrongdoing. The Netanyahu family attorneys in the law office of Dr J Weinroth and Co described the allegations of the maintenance worker as “mendacious” and said they had no basis in reality.
The court award came two days after the police announced that they had completed a 15-month investigation of the prime minister’s residences that focused on “a number of issues that raised the suspicion of the commission of criminal offences” including fraud and breach of trust.
Unusually, the police statement did not include the names of those involved or any recommendation of how to proceed with the case, saying only that the findings had been given to the district attorney of occupied Jerusalem for a decision on whether to press charges.
But the Israeli news media widely reported that the police believed that there was sufficient evidence for indictments against Sara Netanyahu and two others: an electrician connected to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the deputy director for operations at the prime minister’s office, Ezra Saidoff. Saidoff was also a defendant in the case decided on Tuesday.
The Netanyahu family responded to the police announcement in a Facebook post saying, “Contrary to the press reports Mrs Netanyahu has not committed any crime.” It added, “The various allegations raised by the news media will turn out to be baseless, like all the other allegations levelled against the Netanyahu family over the years.”
The police investigation began after Israel’s state comptroller published a report in February 2015 that harshly criticised the Netanyahus’ spending habits. The comptroller listed what he considered excessive expenditures on takeout meals, cleaning bills, make-up and hairstyling.
The report also said that the Netanyahus had bypassed regulations to hire the electrician for repairs at the couple’s private residence in Caesarea on weekends and holidays.
The police have questioned Sara Netanyahu for hours in recent months over possible spending irregularities. The Israeli news media has reported accusations that on occasion Netanyahu inflated the number of dinner guests at the Caesarea residence to cover the cost of a private chef and waiting staff, and that she improperly used state funds to pay a caregiver for her ailing father, who died in 2011.
The latest report by the state comptroller, published last week, revived long-running suspicions relating to some of the Netanyahu family’s travels more than a decade ago, when Benjamin Netanyahu was finance minister.
Those suspicions, known as “Bibi Tours”, involve allegations that Netanyahu, who is nicknamed Bibi, had private donors and organisations cover many of his flights abroad, and sometimes pay travel expenses for his wife and children, without informing the parliamentary authorities.
The prime minister’s office responded that after “years of bombastic headlines” and reams of press reports, “the mountain has turned out to be a molehill. Mr Netanyahu’s trips involved no conflict of interest, no double billing, nothing illegal”.
The Netanyahus have accused critics in the Israeli news media of a long campaign to besmirch them and to undermine the Likud’s hold on power. Many Israelis view Sara Netanyahu, a psychologist, as a highhanded, hot-tempered boss who has grown accustomed to the good life and wields immense influence over her husband.
The couple has survived multiple spending scandals including a $127,000 (Dh466,490) installation of a rest chamber in the airplane that took them to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and revelations about a $2,700 annual budget for ice cream from a local ice cream parlour.
Benjamin Netanyahu has won election after election. He is serving his third consecutive term in office, and his fourth overall.
Lawyers for the Netanyahu family said that because Sara Netanyahu was not a party to the case brought against the state by the former maintenance worker, Guy Eliyahu, she was unable to defend herself and bring “dozens of witnesses” who, according to the lawyers, would have refuted the allegations “one by one”.
According to the court ruling, Eliyahu endured “reprimands, shouting, humiliation, excessive and even unreasonable demands”. It said there was “an atmosphere of fear in the residence” during the period of Eliyahu’s employment, from June 2011 until June 2012, and that he was also made to work extraordinarily long hours.
Eliyahu, who was awarded compensation of about 120,000 shekels (more than $30,000) from the state and the contracting company that employed him, was not the first to complain. In February the same court awarded compensation to a former caretaker of the prime minister’s official residence, Meni Naftali, on similar grounds.
Eliyahu told the court that one night he had gone home after midnight, but that Sara Netanyahu called him back to the residence because he had received the prime minister’s permission to leave but not hers. In another episode, Sara Netanyahu is said to have pulled the tablecloth off a table that had been set on a patio for a Saturday lunch because she feared dust had gotten into the salads. She told Eliyahu and another worker to pick up everything and reset the table within five minutes, which they did.
