Smotrich says PM’s aides should ‘sit behind bars’ if they worked for Qatar |
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Thursday that if employees in the Prime Minister’s Office had done work on behalf of Qatar, they should be sent to prison for many years, becoming the latest coalition member to support the investigation of the escalating Qatargate scandal.
At a conference organized by the Makor Rishon newspaper, Smotrich said the scandal should be fully probed by the Shin Bet, a day after Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli became the first minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to speak out in favor of the ongoing investigation.
“If there are corrupt people within the Prime Minister’s Office who, amid a war, worked for Qatar, they need to be pilloried and sit behind bars for many years,” Smotrich said.
However, Smotrich asserted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has acted throughout the war based only on “relevant considerations.”
If “questionable figures” managed to “infiltrate” the Prime Minister’s Office, “it’s very serious,” Smotrich said.
“Someone who was working for an enemy state in a time of war — I don’t have words to describe how despicable and serious it is,” Smotrich said.
The minister said that during the two years of the war, he did not have any contact with Eli Feldstein, a central suspect in the Qatargate affair.
Feldstein and top Netanyahu adviser Jonathan Urich are alleged to have worked — while they were in Netanyahu’s employ — on behalf of Qatar for the Perception PR firm headed by Yisrael Einhorn, Netanyahu’s former campaign manager, in the scandal known as Qatargate.
Einhorn and Perception are believed to have conducted campaigns in Israel and abroad to boost Qatar’s image,........