(e) The fact that the transaction between the State of Israel and Gazprom was not realistic, and therefore there was no point in promoting any ancillary transaction. This argument is based, according to the defense, on Kedmi's statement that there was no chance of advancing a project to purchase gas from Russia, on the defendant's statement regarding Gazprom's policy, according to which it enters into agreements only with countries and not with private companies, and on what was stated in the second meeting summary document, where the following was noted:
"The company's general manager emphasized that the company would sell natural gas solely only to the state of Israel or to a company representing it (a state owned company that will be defined up by the Israeli party)…"
The cluster to which the defense referred is far from complete and complete in a manner that allows for the complete negation of the feasibility of the transaction between the State of Israel and Gazprom, and accordingly of the accompanying transaction.
At the same time, even if we see on the basis of the same data referred by the defense that the chances of a transaction between the State of Israel and Gazprom were low, this does not negate the rationale inherent in preparing an infrastructure for the advancement of an ancillary transaction, certainly when we are dealing with a person who has made an enormous fortune from identifying business opportunities, which no one before him seems to have identified. I will note that according to Kedmi's testimony, and to the extent that an agreement had been signed between the State of Israel and Gazprom, it could have been assumed that the state would have used private companies for the purpose of transporting the gas (Prov. p. 714, para. 21).
(f) It was argued that the fact that Manofim is a party to the draft of the accompanying transaction shows that the defendant has no involvement in anything, in the absence of any logic to "harness" a public company in which he is a partner, which lacks knowledge in the field, and to prefer this option to an attempt to promote the transaction through one of his private companies. In this context, the defense also referred to the testimony of Vaknin and Ben-Zaken, who denied knowledge of the accompanying transaction. I also did not see fit to give significant weight to this argument. Manofim, according to the draft accompanying employment contract, was defined as one that is supposed to obtain all the government approvals and authorizations as required or desirable, according to Israeli law, so that logic can be found in its being a party to the contract, even if its business is not in the field of gas transportation (as the defendant claimed in relation to all the companies he owned at the time).