In summary, the Ministry of Interior wrote in its letter of February 18,2021:
"In our case, the order of things has been reversed, so that in the framework of the drafting of the tender - the municipality has already decided the questions that are subject to the decision of the planning institutions; it determined on its own the use (which is not in accordance with the plan); and then retroactively changed the basic economic terms and assumptions in accordance with the results of the tender and the specific circumstances of the contract (instead of the result of the tender being derived from the preconditions).
Therefore, it appears that the addition of the use now is not sufficient to cure all the defects that occurred in the transaction.
We would like to emphasize once again that even if the planning incompatibility was the only flaw in the conduct of the tender process, the addition of the use now would not have led to the approval of the Minister of the Interior for the engagement between the municipality and the company."
- This is the place to note that the Municipality, in its affidavits of testimony (see paragraphs 37-39 of Adv. Cohen's affidavit), refrained from referring to the above email message that it received from the Ministry of the Interior on January 10,2021, and referred only to Ms. Carmit Fenton's letter that was sent thereafter, on February 18,2021 (N/15).
It should also be noted that the Municipality concealed in real time the aforementioned email message dated January 10,2021 from Adv. Yirmiyahu, and this was revealed to the Company only by chance (paragraph 58 of the Wechter affidavit), and even at this stage, after the Company contacted the Municipality to understand the meaning of the matter, the Municipality refrained from responding to this.
- This letter only strengthens the conclusion that the Municipality acted in bad faith that continued throughout the life of the engagement with the Company, in view of the concealment of material information from the Company, and even worse, when it presented the Company with false representations, according to which the approval of the Minister of the Interior would be examined, as it were, after the change in the zoning plan, at a time when the Municipality knew very well that such approval would not be granted. From the letter of the Ministry of the Interior, it can be learned that the Municipality's conduct at that time was serial. It was found that the Municipality also conducted itself in a similar manner in its engagement with Omretta, Supermatist and YBOX, with the Ministry of the Interior repeatedly clarifying to it that its conduct was improper and that the tenders that were approved in the past were an exception and that tenders that did not conform to the plan that began in the future would not be approved.
The municipality chose to ignore the position of the Ministry of the Interior and acted in a "bullying" manner when it ignored the position of the Ministry of the Interior and continued to publish tenders that did not correspond to the plan that applied to the land with the intention and perhaps hope that political pressure would be exerted on the Minister of the Interior who would approve the agreements, as was done in the past given the municipality's budgetary distress at the time, all in order to enrich the municipality's coffers even at a price that could actually lead to losses for the municipality (publishing tenders that do not comply with the zoning plan are priced at a low cost).