(b) It was claimed that the investigation failed in not examining, and in any case did not provide proof, of the connection between the defendant and Vanist (the other party to the accompanying draft employment contract)However, even this argument is not of significant strength, since a clear connection between the defendant and Vanist has not been proven, and it can be assumed that after many years of business activity in the field of energy (and even if the defendant focused on the gas sector), the defendant became acquainted with a large number of "key players" in this field. It should be noted that in his testimony in court, the defendant confirmed that he knew that Vanist was engaged in the field of pipes – a field relevant to the accompanying transaction;
(c) It was argued that Orit's testimony indicates that she transferred various documents to files on the Manofim server (including the defendant's folder), even where she independently believed that those documents were relevant, and therefore the presence of those four documents in the defendant's file should not be regarded as evidence of his knowledge. It is possible that this argument had significant weight, insofar as it was a situation in which the same documents were located only in that folder, but in practice, it was proven that the defendant received the draft crane agreement. To his email addressfrom both Masha Petros and Danny Vaknin, so that the claim does not undermine the conclusion that he knew it;
(d) It was argued that the possibility was not ruled out that any party, apparently from the Russian side, who knew about the meeting with Gazprom, tried to identify a business opportunity and forwarded the draft of the accompanying employment contract on its own initiative. This is an argument that has not been supported by evidence, even if only primitively, and it certainly does not undermine the obvious conclusion. Moreover, and similar to the situation discussed in a criminal appeal Friedman As detailed above, the defendant could have easily traced how the documents ended up in a folder bearing his name on a crane server, or to his email inbox. In practice, the same Masha Petros was not summoned to testify on behalf of the defense, and the other testimonies that were heard did not support the claim that an unknown party from the Russian side was involved in the receipt of the documents to Manofim and the defendant. Moreover, even if some party on the Russian side believed that it was possible to promote a deal that would be accompanying the potential deal between the State of Israel and Gazprom, this still does not explain how the two meeting summary documents reached the defendant's folder on the Manofim server, with at least one of them (the first meeting summary document was prepared by an official from the Ministry of Infrastructures);