These arguments should not be accepted. This is not what emerged from the testimonies, and this does not justify coordinating price quotes or legitimizing it.
As stated above, the defense referred to various statements made by Leshem in his testimony, some of them in reference to the criticism raised by Peretz, in real time and in his testimony, regarding the procurement procedures at IAI. We discussed above, and extensively, Peretz's testimony and his general position. We have seen that alongside the criticism raised by Peretz in relation to the procurement procedures, and although in certain situations he assessed that pricing between suppliers would not be effective or that his ability to bring about a better result would be limited, Peretz clarified that this was an internal assessment of a civil appeal that was not of interest to the suppliers, that he emphasized that he did not conduct competition on the face of it, and that where they approached suppliers with a request for price quotes, Do this in order to conduct real bidding, in order to receive real bids, while trying to incentivize suppliers to give the best bids, and with the understanding that there can always be surprises due to the competition (see at length in paragraphs 603-618 above). These words are also appropriate in response to the arguments here. In fact, it also emerged from Leshem's testimony that the pricing and application of requests for quotes were not done on the face of it, and that even if in certain circumstances the competition was less efficient or effective, the winning of a particular supplier was not guaranteed, there was value in holding a competition, because it was held in order to receive genuine offers, and not coordinated idle offers (see, for example, Leshem, p. 2137, S. 24-6 there, he testified explicitly, following what he said in the Authority's interrogation, that the references to suppliers were not only for appearances and not only for the purpose of "ticking a box"; The attempt to attribute the opposite meaning to things was not convincing; See also: p. 2120, paras. 1-28, where he emphasized that even when a supplier has already invested against the project, his win is not guaranteed and there is a reason to hold a competition, and that the procurement is always interested in making a competition, which is the basic tool for lowering prices; P. 2135, paras. 2-17, even in the case of a doubt that the investor can come out in an orderly way and the other suppliers can compete and provide a solution).