Yaron Isaac, a former staff officer and director in the Central District who was responsible for construction from 2014 to 2016, testified that the prison administration is not aware of the technical details of projects, the construction department does not examine the smaller projects with high resolution, and the accountants do not know exactly what was carried out in the field.
- The conclusion that emerges from the testimonies is that the supervision of the projects was not at a high level of resolution, which could reveal relatively small deviations and discrepancies that are not apparent, between the bill of quantities and what is being carried out in the field. Whether this stemmed from a lack of appropriate ability or training, or as a result of the trust placed in the defendant due to his professionalism and extensive experience, and possibly a combination of the two. The defendants' conversation, which ostensibly implies that there is a connection between the defendant's income and the opening of new projects in the IPS, when his salary is supposed to be the fixed salary of an employee in the civil service, when during the conversation the defendant even shy away from talking on the phone on this subject, is not conclusive evidence in itself, but it is sufficient to strengthen what is stated regarding the existence of the "inflation mechanism".
The conclusion is that the defense's argument that there is no feasibility of the "inflation mechanism" should be rejected.
- As for the influence on the identity of the subcontractors, according to Oppenheim's testimony, even if the main contractor chooses a subcontractor, this choice is subject to the approval of the construction officer, and if a construction officer is not satisfied with a particular subcontractor, he is entitled to decide that the subcontractor will not work on the project. According to Alfasi, the main contractors attached importance to the defendant's position regarding the identity of the subcontractor, and even approached the defendant more than once in order to choose a contractor he was familiar with. The defendant had the power to impose difficulties on a subcontractor who wished to be employed in IPS projects. See also the statements of Assaf Klaus (below, in indictment 9) that he received work in the IPS from the contractors or from the defendant, as well as the words of the defendant, who did not rule out the possibility of assisting Klaus in obtaining work in the IPS.
The same is true of the testimonies of Benny Biton and Morris Michaeli (hereinafter in indictment 14), according to which the defendant chose the subcontractor Biton for the project that is the subject of the indictment (and Michaeli testified that there were other projects in which the defendant chose the subcontractor). In the same matter, the defendant even told Biton: "If I don't trust you, you won't work." The conclusion that emerges from these testimonies is that the defendant had an influence on the employment of subcontractors in IPS projects.
- In the testimonies reviewed above in this section, I did not find any reference to the influence or lack thereof of the defendant in determining the profit of IPS main contractors. However, the issue arose in the framework of Charges 4 and 6, in which a conversation No. 225 of January 28, 2018, between the defendant and Tavorinsky was mentioned. In this conversation, the defendant stated that he had ensured that Tavorinsky had a contractor profit of 15% instead of 10%, and later in the conversation, Tavorinsky remarked that he was asking for a profit of 20%. These words indicate the influence of the defendant in determining the profit of main contractors. In addition, in the framework of indictment 8, Tavorinsky clearly stated that in cases where he worked with the defendant, the defendant was the one who determined his profit percentage. This indicates the defendant's influence in determining the profit of IPS main contractors.
I will now proceed to discuss the charges in their order.