Oved Yehezkel, cabinet secretary during the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has been named as the owner of the strategic consultancy company that allegedly committed fraud and bribery. He was detained for questioning under caution on Monday and has been under house arrest since.
The Israel National Fraud Investigation Unit suspects that Yehezkel took money from budgets allocated to a joint project of several non-for-profit funds in exchange for giving work to a public relations agency, while the funds did not know he took money for channeling the work.
Yehezkel allegedly committed bribery and fraud in aggravated circumstances. He first teamed up with Olmert in 1993 and served as an assistant after he was elected Mayor of Jerusalem. In 2003 he became his assistant at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor and on July 18 2007, Yehezkel was appointed cabinet secretary in Israel's 16th government. He resigned from the post in April 2009.
Yehezkel was questioned in the past over the investment center affair in which Olmert was convicted of breach of trust for his role in political appointments to the Small Businesses Authority. However, no charges were brought against Yehezkel who subsequently set up his consultancy agency.
Yehezkel and his wife Idit have four children and live on Kfar Daniel.
Another suspect in the case is Ayelet Azulai who was head of Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's office.
Yehezkel's attorney Adv. Shimon Dolan said, "Yehezkel was summoned for questioning and cooperated fully. Our impressions are that the suspicions raised about him stem from a combination of misleading information and mistaken interpretation of absolutely proper conduct that was impeccable. In our opinion, that nothing exceptional will be found in his actions."
Adv. Dolan added, "Yehezkel and the company he heads stringently does everything required by law. Media reports concerning Oved, his family and employees have inflicted grave damage and are groundless and we are bothered by the intolerable ease with which the good name of a person can be harmed. We hope and ask that the investigation will end swiftly and that his name will be cleansed with the same speed and scale with which the reports have harmed his good name."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 28, 2015
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