Criminal Case (Jerusalem) 54589-02-17 State of Israel v. Oshri Sharon - part 273

The case began with e-mail correspondence that was seized on the suppliers' computers and raised suspicions of price coordination between the suppliers (Marcus, p. 4102, paras. 18-24).  Since some of the correspondence related to the coordination of price proposals with the civil appeal bodies, the Investigative Authority acted and carried out many significant investigative actions vis-à-vis IAI.  Among other things, the ISA applied to the court, which issued orders for the production of documents (for example, N/314, later data requirements were also issued by virtue of the Competition Law).  The Authority's investigators came to the civil appeals courts many times and accompanied the search carried out by the civil appeal personnel in the computer systems and procurement systems in order to locate documents relevant to the proceedings in which suspicions of coordination arose.  The defense's argument that there was no room to act in the aforementioned manner except through a search by the Authority's own investigators in a civil appeal was based on the claim that the civil appeal committed offenses herself, and therefore that she had a conflict of interest and that she had something to hide.  However, as already noted above, no basis was laid for the fact that the civil appeal or anyone acting on its behalf conducted any kind of screening or that the materials were selectively transferred to the investigative authority.  Moreover, as has already been determined above, the Civil Appeals officials were not aware of the coordination of the price quotes between the suppliers and that coordinated bids had been submitted to them.  In the case of the indictments, the members of the Civil Appeals asked for truthful suggestions and not coordinated empty proposals.  The coordination with respect to the charges in the indictment was all made behind the backs of the civil appeal and without her knowledge (see, inter alia, paragraphs 915-916 and the references therein, and there are no vague and general statements such as that of Vischnitzer in his interrogation with the Authority, which the defense presented to Marcus in his testimony, p. 4062, paras. 24 - p. 4063, para. 7, to change this matter or to establish a sufficient basis for suspicion).  The argument that the proceedings of the Special Operations Committee that are the subject of the charges before me were ostensibly or fictitious was also rejected individually.  This is sufficient to drop the basis for the defense's argument.  Even if the civil appellants did not adhere to IAI's internal procurement procedures in one case or another, or even if there was a defect in the tender laws or some other defect in the procurement process, this does not establish a defense for the defendants (see paragraph 339 above).  Nor does this give rise to a reasonable suspicion of a criminal offense on the part of the civil appeal or a concern of a conflict of interest therein in a manner that could lead to a conclusion regarding a flaw in the conduct of the investigation (and thus the matter in our case differs from the state of affairs in a criminal case (Jerusalem District) 55308-11-15 State of Israel v. Yehoshua (11 March 2021), to which the defense referred; there it was said that the employee was in an ongoing dispute with the defendant, who filed false complaints against him.  that she complained against him, and despite the aforesaid and despite the fact that she was found to be in a clear conflict of interest, she was the one who carried out substantive investigative actions in his case (see ibid., paragraphs 65-66); The distance to our matter is clear).  The fact is that where a suspicion arose of an offense on the part of any of the members of the civil appeal – and that refers to the conduct  regarding the ELA transaction – the matter was investigated and Menashe from the civil appeal was prosecuted.  However, as determined above, the conduct there is not at all similar to the improper conduct and coordination that are the subject of the charges before us (see paragraph 914 above).