Second, in her attempt to justify her conduct in the context ofYossi's interrogation in the assault case (the second indictment), the defendant claimed that she did not inform Yossi of the suspicions against him, because he was already aware of them. In other words, already at this early date - at the beginning of April, when the assault case was opened in March - the defendant was well aware that Yossi was involved in a case of violence, as a suspect.
Third, only one day after she met Yossi, the defendant corresponded with Natalie and told her - on her own initiative - that Yossi "is a criminal." In her cross-examination before me, the defendant sought to explain her expression as a form of slang, of speaking in codes or using metaphors. However, already in that correspondence, the defendant noted that Yossi "sat in prison and such" - and it is clear that these were not images or fantasies, but concrete facts, which the defendant mentioned in a free conversation with a friend.
- In addition to all of the above, it should be emphasized that the defendant was also aware of Yossi's current criminal activity (at the time), which was arrested, among other things, in April in the Ayalon area, that is, shortly after the beginning of the relationship between the two, and even knew that he was indeed declared. The clear and necessary conclusion is therefore that the defendant was well aware of Yossi's being a criminal already at the time of her acquaintance with him, that she had spoken to him about his criminal activity during the relationship between them, and that she was even aware of his significant criminal activity. In this context, it is not superfluous to mention that in her testimony before me, the defendant described herself as someone who likes to "go to the edge", and knowingly she also had contact with another criminal, Yakir Maimoni, who, according to her, approached her after he was arrested and asked to know what she was talking about; And she did a test for him.
- Providing information from police databases as an offense of fraud and breach of trust:
- The definition of the offense of fraud and breach of trust, according to the provisions of section 284 of the Penal Law, states that "a public servant who commits in the performance of his duties an act of fraud or breach of trust that harms the public, even if the act would not constitute an offense if committed against an individual, shall be sentenced to three years' imprisonment"; When Israel Police officers are of course included among public servants. The difficulties raised by this definition of the offense - due to the fact that it is a broad definition with "open tissue", in which the factual element is not sufficiently defined - have been addressed by case law more than once (see, for example, at length inAdditional Criminal Hearing 1397/03 State of Israel v. Sheves, IsrSC 59 (4) 385 (2004)).
- However, the essence of the offense of fraud and breach of trust - with regard to the element of "breach of trust" - is the breach of the duty of trust that the public servant owes, by virtue of his position, to the public (see additional criminal discussion of Sheves above, especially in the opinion of Justice Cheshin). What is common to the wide range of improper behaviors, which are included in the offense of fraud and breach of trust, is therefore that in all of them the public servant acts "in a manner that does not fulfill the interest entrusted to fulfill" (Criminal Appeal 6629/23 State of Israel v. Solomon (August 19, 2025)). It was further ruled that being present or acting in a situation of "conflict of interest" is a clear act of breach of trust, where "the main characteristic of being in a conflict of interest is a tension between the interest in which the public servant is entrusted and another, external to his work" (see Criminal Appeal 3817/18 State of Israel v. Hassan (December 3, 2019)).
- A public servant who provides an unqualified person with information that has come to him by virtue of his position, without a lawful permit, therefore violates the duty of trust that he owes to the public (see also the definition of the offense of "disclosure in breach of duty", according to the provisions of section 117(a) of the Penal Law). This is all the more so when it comes to a policeman serving in the Israel Police, because the police are responsible for the internal security of the country and the maintenance of public order. It should be emphasized that by virtue of the role of the police "in the prevention and detection of offenses" (as stated in the provisions of section 3 of the Police Ordinance [New Version], 5731-1971), the disclosure of information relating to ongoing police investigations not only does not constitute a possible violation of the privacy of those involved or other interests, but also includes, In addition, in order to disrupt the investigations and impair the ability of the police to properly carry out its central role. Hence, a police officer who knowingly provides police information to an unqualified person is also acting in a conflict of interest with his role as a police officer, which is supposed to assist the police in carrying out its tasks and certainly not to abuse his access to police information. This is true whether the policeman gives the information out of a financial interest, whether he gives it out of an interest in helping a relative or friend, or whether he gives it out of a mere desire to impress.
- During the course of the trial, as well as in the preamble to the defense's summaries, the defense attorney reiterated that the defendant did not point to any offense in the law - or even in an internal procedure - that prohibited the defendant from passing on the information she provided, which according to her version was transferred in the course of her role in providing public service. The problem is that this interesting argument is a reversal: we are not dealing here with a general question in the field of freedom of expression, in which case the argument was certainly in place, but rather with a concrete-specific question of disclosure of information that reached the defendant solely by virtue of her position as a police officer in the Israel Police.
- The defendant is accused in the indictment of " unlawfully" disclosing the said information - a phrase that in normative contexts usually means without lawful justice (cf. Z. Feller, Foundations of Penal Law (Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law at the Hebrew University, 1984), vol. 1, p.'403 onwards); This is certainly the case in our case. In other words, the legal question before me is not the question of whether the defendant was prohibited from disclosing information from police databases to anyone - let alone criminals - but whether the defendant had a lawful permission to do so. Here, too, it should be noted that this is information that reached the defendant by virtue of her work in the police, which is known to be part of the executive branch, and therefore her powers are limited and limited only to those granted to her by law. And now, not only did the defendant not point to me any permission to provide the vast amount of police information that she had given to Yossi, but her commander, Superintendent Ashkenazi, who testified in court on her behalf, unequivocally denied the existence of such a permit. In his testimony before me, Superintendent Ashkenazi argued, among other things: "They don't transfer materials, they don't. You don't take pictures from a computer. There are no such things" (see paragraph 145 above and also in memorandum P/44 regarding his conversation with the interrogator Babitsky).
- As part of the completion of the oral summaries, and to the court's question on this specific issue, the defense argued that evidence that the defendant's actions did not amount to an offense was the fact that if Yossi had contacted a colleague of the defendant - who was not in contact with him - there would have been nothing wrong with the transfer of the information (in the transcript, p. 336, line 23 ff.). However, this argument cannot be accepted. The defendant's connection with Yossi was the reason, i.e., the motive, for her actions, but it does not raise or lower the issue of the criminality of the acts themselves. Even if another police officer, without any special connection to the criminal Yossi, had conducted multiple checks on him over time, extracted information about him from the police databases and provided it to him, including text messages that included screenshots of a police computer with data about pending investigation files, it would have been an act of fraud and breach of trust.
- There is no legal novelty in the aforesaid. Thus, for example, more than 20 years ago, a police officer was convicted of fraud, breach of trust, and invasion of privacy, among other things, for using information from a police database without a permit. In its ruling, the court noted, in this context and with reference to a similar defense argument regarding the provision of "public service", as follows:
I cannot under any circumstances adopt the defendant's arguments... I have no doubt that it cannot be referred to as "public service" by borrowing it and in the act of an equal decree, which is nothing but a cynical definition that ignores the other side of the coin, which is rooted in the very disclosure of one person's criminal record to another, by a man of law without any justification and in the absence of any legal basis to do so, with a serious violation of his privacy...