More importantly, no positive evidence was presented from which it can be concluded that beyond that meeting organized by the defendant, the defendant was also involved in the second time that Ben-Eliezer assisted in obtaining a visa, and in any event, according to the testimony of Binyamin Ibn Tzur, he understood that it was actually Eskin who contacted Ben-Eliezer directly on that second occasion.
- From now on, the assistance that Ben-Eliezer gave to B&E was localized, and all that has been proven amounts to two "aids" given in 2007 and 2008 (out of dozens of visas received by the company's employees over the years). It is important to note that according to Eskin's testimony, that there is no reason not to accept him in this matter, the problem of obtaining visas arose again in the years 2008-2009, so that even if there was a feeling among the company's employees (and especially Eskin) that Ben-Eliezer's intervention was effective, in practice it appears that his intervention helped only locally in those two cases. In January 2011, the Egyptian revolution broke out, and in any case, employees of Israeli companies were not allowed to enter Egypt, and despite this, the company continued to be active, in other avenues, remained profitable, and certainly at no stage was it claimed that it had collapsed, or was close to it.
See, in this context, the testimony of Eskin in Prov. p. 97, para. 24, as well as his letter to the Egyptian Consul of February 19, 2009, in which he complains about the various refusals to receive visas, and requests that the Consul deal with this problem (P/1). It is presumed that as much as Ben-Eliezer's assistance in 2008 was significant and led to the resolution of the problem, as may have been understood from Eskin's testimony in the main interrogation, Eskin was not required to write that letter as early as 2009.
- Against the background of the above, and further to my determination that the activity in Egypt was significant for B&E, it is not possible to determine, not even approximately, that Ben-Eliezer's specific assistance "saved the company from collapse" or similar statements detailed in the prosecution summaries, and in any case it was not proven that Ben-Eliezer assisted the company "whenever necessary" as stated in the indictment.
This conclusion is also consistent with Eskin's testimony in his cross-examination of the defendant's attorney – Attorney Sassi Gaz: