The picture that emerges is that the investigating authority acted as required in order to obtain the documents relevant to the procurement proceedings that are the subject of the charges. Needless to say, the absence of one document or another in a large-scale file of the type in question is not an exceptional event to the extent that it attests to a defect in the conduct of the investigative bodies. In view of the aforesaid, the allegations of investigative failures should not be accepted on the basis of an alleged deficiency in the investigative materials, and the allegations do not cast doubt on the guilt of the defendants as it arises from the well-established evidentiary basis that was brought in their case that proves the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
In any case, the defendants' defense in his case was not deprived. Even if it were possible to carry out additional investigative actions or locate additional materials, in view of the comprehensive evidentiary picture that was presented, there is no basis for the defendants' defense to be deprived or that there is a real fear that they have been wronged. In this context, the defense argued that due to the lack of understanding of all the correspondence between the technical manager (the project) and the procurement bodies, it was not possible to locate, for example, a demand by the project to engage with a certain supplier (see, for example, paragraphs 584 and 570 of the Wee summaries). These arguments should not be accepted. We saw above that in the course of the investigation, individual doubt explanation forms issued by the project's personnel were seized (see, for example, N/11 regarding the fifth charge, at paragraph 352). 352above). However, as we have seen at length above, the aforesaid position of the project personnel – which is an internal position of a civil appeal that was not known to the suppliers – does not exclude the possibility of pricing and competition by the procurement bodies in order to obtain optimal bids and check the procurement prices, and does not legitimize the coordination of price proposals behind the backs of a civil appeal (see the discussion at paragraphs 372-385 above). In any case, these are not allegations that can establish a defense or give rise to reasonable doubt of guilt.
- The defense further argued that there was a flaw in the investigation in that the accuser "deposited" – and in fact "privatized" – the investigation in the hands of the civil appeal and did not act to carry out the search and locating of the documents herself; that in doing so, the accuser asked the civil appeal – which is allegedly the perpetrator of the offense – to transfer to her material documenting the offense that the civil appeal committed by making fictitious pricing; and allowed a civil appeal that had an interest in concealing its wrongdoing to "filter" the interrogation materials that were transferred (the defense referred, inter alia, to the testimony of Marcus that he hoped that the civil appeal officers would give him everything, and that if they concealed things from him, he had no control over it, p. 3988, paras. 7-21); that there was a flaw in the fact that the members of the civil appeal were not interrogated with a warning, even though there was a reasonable suspicion that they had committed criminal offenses (and that this was not done even after the investigative materials from the Department of Investigation were transferred to the investigating authority, P/315); that the suspicion of coordination between the suppliers mentioned in the request for documents was disclosed in advance to the civil appeal (P/314; the application there was made to the legal counsel of the civil appeal and was asked not to disclose the details of the suspicions of the civil appeal personnel in the projects and procurement); and that there was no confrontation between the civil appealers and the suppliers (Arbiv, p. 4174, paras. 13-22).
Here, too, I am unable to accept the allegations of investigative failures, and in any event, the allegations do not give rise to a real concern that the defendants' defense has been deprived.