See, with regard to the testimony of the accused, which, on the face of it, seems perfectly logical:
"This document, Honorable Judge, I checked this email, all this time I didn't receive any document, something like that, now, I think that the lady and they, I think, in the checks that they did to me in my interrogations, if I'm not wrong, asked me to give them my email, to take out my email, I didn't get it, but, Honorable Judge, I don't see any problem with that. Even if I were to accept and say, I don't know Ms. Liron Mizrahi, I don't know who she is, I don't know what her role is. I don't know why he changed her mind? And if she changed her mind, may she be blessed, I say this, because what did she write? But it didn't help anything either, I don't understand what this letter could have been connected to me in any way" (Prov. p. 1207, s. 10).
Moreover, at that time (19 March 2011) Ben-Eliezer was hospitalized in critical condition, so even if the defendant had understood (and this is not the case) that the email was related to some improper action committed by Azoulay, this does not lead to a determination, with the required level of certainty, that he learned from this about improper actions committed by Ben-Eliezer in general or about the telephone conversation he had with Mimran in particular.
As things stand, I do not believe that there is evidentiary implications for deciding the specific dispute detailed above, and I do not consider the data presented to support the prosecution's conclusion regarding the defendant's awareness of the "Ben-Eliezer-Mimran" conversation.
Fifth, Mimran described that the conversation with Ben-Eliezer took place while Ben-Eliezer served as Minister of Industry, Industry, and Labor, hence that January 2011 can be seen as the last possible date on which it was held. The fact that, according to the prosecution, the defendant also held at that point in time another clear interest in the transfer of the money to Ben-Eliezer (in the context of the tax proceedings) negates the possibility of "distinguishing" the transfer of the money to the only action that Ben-Eliezer performed for the benefit of the Shemen company in the context of the "Ashdod Med" drilling, and does not allow for a "retrospective" conclusion about the defendant's awareness of that action. Moreover, as early as January 2011, Mimran expressed a firm position rejecting the position of Shemen, and this position did not change even as the months passed and Mimran turned out to be a "hard nut to crack" that does not change his position regarding the application of the new criteria. As this was the case, the implicit claim that in September 2011 the defendant transferred 1.5 million shekels to Ben-Eliezer as a "gift" for a single (and implicit) telephone call that did not achieve its purpose is far from convincing, or one that indicates that he was aware of the same action that Ben-Eliezer had committed.