Fraud, perjury, tax evasion: Israeli police say indict interior minister

Israel’s Police recommend indicting Interior Minister Aryeh Deri for a laundry list of offenses.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel’s Police and Tax authority recommended indicting Interior Minister Aryeh Deri for a laundry list of offenses, including fraud, breach of trust, perjury, tax evasion and money laundering, Ynet news reports.

The police built their case after investigating Deri’s dealings with a businessman during his tenure as a minister. The police say he’s guilty of tax offenses in the millions of shekels and submitting false written statements to the State Comptroller and Knesset speaker regarding his assets and earnings, Ynet reports.

Deri “was specifically told not to talk to one of the involved parties about the issues under investigation for fear of evidence tampering,” police said, according to the report.

“But the minister approached that involved party immediately after his questioning and discussed with him the things said in the questioning and his expected testimony to the police, as well as ‘refreshed’ his memory,” the police said.

The police also said they’d built a case against Aryeh Deri’s brother, Attorney Shlomo Deri, who currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Jewish National Fund, who is also suspected of committing tax fraud amounting to millions of shekels.

The investigation, which started in 2015, raised suspicions regarding unusual activity in bank accounts connected to Minister Deri and his family, including large money transfers to business people and to Deri’s accounts, Ynet reports. Some of these activities took place while Deri was still in the Knesset.

In 1999, Deri was sentenced to three years in prison for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He returned to politics in 2012 and was re-elected for a seat in the nineteenth Knesset as a member of the Shas party.