In any case, all of the aforesaid does not change the incriminating conclusion with respect to the coordination of the subject matter of the fifteenth indictment – the Licensing Renewal Task Force – which revolved around a different transaction outline, and when at the time of the Planning and Coordination it was not at all known whether it was worthwhile to enter into an ELA transaction and whether it would be ripe.
- The defense argued that Winschel's request to receive price quotes in the framework of the license renewal program was a "preliminary and not serious probe" (paragraph 704 of Harel's summaries). The defense sought to build on Winschel's testimony that "no pricing was carried out between companies" "because the intention pricing is already the more advanced stage of an order. It's a procurement committee, it's all the procurement processes within the company," because Winschel received bids and didn't move forward with it, because it is possible to receive price quotes "so that there will be the initial reference" after which the procurement process will begin, after which there will be "competition" (p. 636, s. 22 - p. 638, s. 7). It appears that in doing so, the defense sought to argue that this was the receipt of initial proposals, which was not in the framework of the competitive proceeding, and therefore – it appears that this is the argument – there is no concern of harm to competition.
We discussed at length above that coordinating price quotes, even when it is done at an initial stage, is invalid and amounts to an offense (see the discussion at paragraph 491 above, where a similar argument was discussed with respect to Gendelman, the subject of the seventh indictment; see also paragraphs 340-342, paragraph 469 and paragraph 877 above). What is said there is appropriate for our case, and there is no need to repeat it. Coordination regarding the proposed price – even at the initial stage – is inherently prohibited and falls within the scope of absolute holdings. Moreover, it is clear from Winschel's testimony that the price quotes she requested were intended to serve the procurement bodies in the procurement process, to serve as the anchor for the price and the pricing, because she – who did not know about the coordination – even tried to negotiate with Gilad in order to obtain a better price quote from Harel (P/87), and it is clear that the coordination of the bids could have harmed competition. Here, too, the very coordination between Shahar and Gilad undermines the claim that this is an "unserious" stage and in a sense devoid of any importance, significance or potential to influence competition (ibid., as well as Weinschel's testimony that she felt deceived when she learned of this, p. 607, paras. 16 – p. 608, para. 21, as well as her attempt to negotiate with Gilad after his proposal, undermine the claims that this was a meaningless preliminary proceeding).
- The defense argued that the license renewal order was fictitious and that Wee's win was known and clear in advance (e.g., para. 693 of the Harel summaries, para. 531 of the Wee summaries). The defendants pointed to various indications that support their view that Wei's victory was guaranteed. Among other things, they pointed out that the value of the offer was given to Winschel even before the SP was sent (P/90); that Winschel only sent an accompaniment to update the contents of the UAV (P/60, P/550); and that the proposals submitted to the Licensing Renewal Committee differed from one another in certain aspects in their content (P/85, P/86, P/552, Weinschel, p. 671, paras. 1-5) and therefore it was not possible to compare them and Weinschel did not even compare them (p. 671, paras. 13-21).
These arguments should not be accepted.