This unreliable version of Scherzer was completely refuted by the testimonies of Attorneys Carmeli and Bartal (which, as noted, Malka also supported in his later testimony). The credibility of the defense attorneys' version (who testified as prosecution witnesses and who did not dispute the content of their statements) in comparison to Scherzer's version is already necessary due to the perplexities presented at the beginning of this chapter: the filing of a joint indictment against Malka together with the other defendants, even though Malka's version in the interrogation served as a central pillar of the evidence against the others; the failure of the Department for the Investigation of Police to implement the temporary economic assault orders it issued against Malka during his arrest; and its failure to request the forfeiture of his property in the indictment; While the temporary orders against Fischer were executed and forfeiture was requested against him. The only explanation for these moves is found in the knowledge and certainty that the Department for the Investigation of Police had from the first day Malka began cooperating with his interrogators – May 4, 2015 – that after the indictment was filed, a state witness agreement would be signed with him, in the framework of which he would be granted economic benefits. This is by virtue of negotiations that began before Malka's interrogation on May 4, 2015, ten days before the indictment was filed, and continued for a month until the signing of the state's witness agreement on June 4, 2015.
Moreover. The preference for Malka's lawyers' version over Scherzer's version was strengthened in light of additional benefits that were revealed to Malka during his interrogations prior to the filing of the indictment: on the very day Malka began to cooperate with his interrogators (May 4, 2015), he was able to have a phone conversation with his wife and a meeting between him and the state's witness that was not recorded (2347, 4118-4119); Scherzer confirmed that there was no investigative purpose in the meeting and that it was allowed at Malka's request.Interpersonal Interest" (16151); Spitzer noted that this is an unusual move (14026); During Malka's interrogation on May 6, 2015, he was given the opportunity to meet his wife in the conference room of the Department for the Investigation of Police (investigator's note in question 92 of the written statement, testimony of Spitzer at pp. 14025-14026); On the same occasion (two days after he began cooperating in the investigation), Spitzer returned to Malka's wife one of the mobile phones that had been seized from him and signed him with the appropriate authorization (P/271); Spitzer noted that this was an unusual step, which he had taken in accordance with the order he had received, and that it was not customary to return to a suspect in the status of a detainee the phone that was seized in his possession for interrogation purposes (14634-14638); Following a hearing in the Magistrate's Court on the extension of his detention on May 11, 2015, investigators from the Department for the Investigation of Police did not prevent Malka from being interviewed by the media while he was detained (14084). These are only some of the indications that strengthen the existence of an agreement between Malka and the Department for the Investigation of Police prior to the filing of the indictment. In this context, mention will also be made of Malka's refusal to respond in his interrogations since May 4, 2015, to some of the questions presented to him, for the reason that "That his lawyers are trying to make a move behind the scenes and that it's the last thing he has left to trade at a later stage" (Spitzer Memorandum of May 6, 2015, N1/3); his statement in the interrogation of May 6, 2015 that he could answer the same questions only with the approval of his lawyer (Q. 73 onwards); and the words of interrogator Ofer Babitsky in the transcript of a conversation he had with Malka before the beginning of his interrogation on May 10, 2015 (a conversation that appears to have been inadvertently documented, given that Babitsky was not one of the interrogators that day): "Well, what does your lawyer say? After all, you are here in negotiations, you know it better than I do." (P/413(b)).
- And if all this was not enough, towards the end of the prosecution case, two conclusive proofs were received that the claim of the Department for the Investigation of Police over the years, as well as the statements of Saada and Scherzer in their testimonies before me, according to which Malka's incriminating versions were supposedly given until the indictment was filed as an ordinary suspect, are not true. The truth is that Malka was at the time in the position of a suspect who was negotiating a state-witness agreement, and gave his statements under an agreement on the condition of anonymity. The two conclusive pieces of evidence were obtained during Sa'ada's cross-examination.
Saada is the most senior official among the members of the Department for the Investigation of Police who testified at the trial, and he was also the dominant senior figure in the negotiations with Malka (21773). In addition, chronologically, Saada is the second in the department to present the false claim regarding Malka's status. This was in an agreement that Saada signed with Malka on June 4, 2015, in which it was written, In complete contradiction to the facts that have been proven before me, "Because even before reaching this agreement, at the interrogation stage, the defendant gave a version that incriminated him and others, All this without asking for anything in return and without being promised anything in return(Clause 2 of the Appendix to the Agreement; emphasis added), and that the consideration stated in the agreement was given to the Queen for the version he gave "After the indictment was filed, as part of this agreement... About the involvement of various parties, some of them senior officials in the past, in criminal offenses" (ibid., section 3), in a manner that creates an artificial and false barrier between the information that Malka provided before the indictment was filed and the information he provided afterwards. Saada's signing of the state's witness agreement was preceded by a statement by the plaintiff from the Department for the Investigation of Police, in a hearing held on June 1, 2015, that "The negotiations began after the indictment was filed... The examination of the possibility of negotiations and conduct in the matter between Defendant 1 and prosecutors under various laws began after the filing of the indictment". However, unlike the plaintiff, who did not pretend to testify about things that were in her personal knowledge and only served as a conduit for transmitting things that were given to her by officials in the Department for the Investigation of Police who personally conducted the contacts with Malka and his attorneys (pp. 2384-2386, 22554), Saada himself signed an agreement on June 4, 2015, which contradicts the written summary drawn up only a month earlier between him and Adv. Bartal. In the same summary, Malka asked for and received a significant reward for the incriminating version that he had sent as he began on May 4, 2015: blocking the Department for the Investigation of Police from using the incriminating information as long as it did not sign an indictment with Malka, after the indictment was filed on a state-witness agreement, and would grant him the benefits that would be agreed upon as part of the agreement.