As stated above, the indictment before me does not revolve around the conduct of the ELA transaction.
With regard to the fifteenth charge that is now being discussed: the Renewal of Licenses, and to all the charges in the indictment, things are completely different. The charges in the indictment relate to requests to receive quotes that were made prior to winning and contracting with one of the suppliers, with the suppliers contacting each other to coordinate the bids behind the customer's back, without his knowledge of the coordination and in any case not at his request. Moreover, in such a situation, even if one of the suppliers has one advantage or another – whether due to preliminary actions that he has performed, or due to technological advantage, or due to prioritization from the manufacturer (see the discussion that began in paragraph 1071 below) – he has no certainty with respect to the win. Uncertainty is at the heart of the competition. Competition is the realm of uncertainty and it is what incentivizes competitors to submit optimal bids. Coordinating price quotes behind the client's back before selecting the winner and executing the order – as is the case with the charges in the indictment and in contrast to the conduct of things in the ELA transaction – is what establishes libels to harm competition and it is what allows the submission of bids that are not optimal for the client.
The aforesaid is sufficient to reject the defense's arguments and the attempt to attribute to the coordination in the indictment the impropriety that adhered to the ELA deal.
- The members of the civil appeal did not know about the coordination in the indictment and did not invite them – we saw that Winschel – it was she who managed the fifteenth indictment – and Koffler, who was in charge of it, testified that they did not know about the coordination between Shachar and Gilad and that their testimonies that were not contradicted should be accepted (see paragraph 895 above; the same applies to the other members of the civil appeal, who did not bring any evidence that they knew about the coordination in the Licenses Renewal Police).
Similarly, the evidence clearly shows that the civil appeal personnel did not know from the rest of the coordination the subject of the charges in the indictment. We have seen that the civil appellants testified in relation to the charges discussed so far that they did not know from the correspondence between the defendants that was made behind their backs and that these testimonies that were not contradicted and that no concrete evidence was presented that could teach otherwise should be accepted (thus, for example, see the discussion in paragraph 308 above, where it was held that Knitwerk did not know about the coordination that was the subject of the fourth indictment and that the version of Shachar who changed his skin in his cross-examination and argued otherwise should be rejected; see paragraph 363 above, There, Naveh's testimony was also mentioned that the procurement person could not have known about the matter of coordination that is the subject of the fifth indictment, as well as the hearing in paragraph 393, and the reference at the end of the paragraph to Oshri in his interrogation at P/212, paras. 608-618 that the civil appeal did not know about the coordination; See paragraph 428 where Shachar confirmed in his testimony that the matter of coordination that is the subject of the sixth indictment was not brought to the attention of IAI; and so on, see also paragraphs 510, 579 (Zeiger's testimony that Peretz did not know about the correspondence that was the subject of the tenth indictment, for sure); 663 and more).